Hogwarts: A Repeated History
by alb925
Summary: Second generation story using the characters from the Auden/Fred series as well as the second generation canon characters. The Weasley and Potter kids make a plan to experience their parents Hogwarts adventures themselves during the course of ten months
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I finally thought of a plot for a second generation story for the Auden/Fred series. I'm really excited about it and it's nice to be writing something related to my other stories. I hope everyone likes it. Leave a review and let me know what you think! :)**

**I don't own Harry Potter. **

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><p>"Mummy, I can't find my left shoe! It was one of the new ones we got in Diagon Alley!"<p>

"Did you check under your bed?"

"Yes!"

"Did you check under _Finn's_ bed?"

"No!"

"Well go check, Cameron, and hurry! We're running late as it is! Where's Aerilyn?"

"I'm right here, Mum. I've been waiting by the door, completely ready to go for the past thirty minutes."

I gave my younger sister a smile as I hurried by her on the way to the kitchen. Aerilyn had been sitting on the floor by the front door and my mother had almost tripped over her.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Felicity Weasley and I am one of four children. I am also a triplet. Aerilyn is the youngest child in general, Finn's the oldest triplet, and Cameron's the middle triplet, leaving me with the position of youngest triplet.

I have a large family. Besides my three siblings, I have two parents, four grandparents, seven uncles, six aunts, and fifteen cousins. Family gatherings are a bit overwhelming. My dad often jokes that we need to rent out Hogwarts just to have a place to fit everyone comfortably for Christmas dinner.

Usually, my aunts and uncles take turns holding Christmas dinner every year, while Grandma and Grandpa Weasley invite everyone over for Christmas Eve. This year it's Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny's turn for Christmas dinner. Not that any of that is exactly relevant at the moment because Christmas is still a few months away.

Today's date is September 1st. Finn, Cameron and I are starting their third year at Hogwarts and Aerilyn is starting her first year. I can tell that she's excited since she was already packed and ready to go, and had been for half an hour. She's nervous too and I could tell by the way Aerilyn had been twisting her ring around her finger.

The ring had been handed down from mum on Aerilyn's eleventh birthday a little over three months ago.

Anyway, I was running to the kitchen. When I got there, I pushed a chair over to the counter and stood on it to reach the top cabinets.

"What are you doing, Lissie?" I glanced over my shoulder to see mum, looking slightly frazzled.

"I'm getting the peanut butter," I answered calmly.

"Why on earth do you need peanut butter? I'm almost afraid to know." Mum put a hand to her head and closed her eyes.

"Then I won't tell you," I answered cheerfully, grabbing what I needed and hopping down from the chair.

"Am I going to find it smeared all over every doorknob in the house?"

"Oh, no. You won't even be the one to find it. Cameron and Finn will find it. In their socks."

"Oh no they won't." Mum quickly snatched the peanut butter away from me, to my disappointment. "We're leaving in fifteen minutes. I hope you're ready to go."

"Yeah, I just have to put a few things in my trunk and I'll be ready."

"No prank material I hope."

I rolled my eyes. "No, that's Finn and Cameron's job." Leaving her standing in the kitchen, I ran out of the room, bumping into dad just outside the door.

"Slow down, Human Bludger," he chuckled, using the nickname he sometimes used on me. "Is your mother in there?" He gestured to the kitchen door.

"Yeah, she's wondering what she's going to do with me," I smirked. Dad wouldn't have taken the peanut butter away if he had been the one to find me. He was a lot more lenient about pranks then mum was. Not that mum was completely against pranks. She couldn't be; she had married dad after all. She was just more likely to put a stop to them than dad was.

"What did you do?" Dad asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"I didn't get a chance to _do _anything. She caught me before I could execute my plan."

"Which was…?"

"I was going to put peanut butter in Finn and Cameron's socks."

Dad burst into loud laughter. "You'll get them next time." He knelt down to my level and lowered his voice to a whisper. "You remember the trick I taught you when you started Hogwarts, don't you? About how to get into the kitchens?"

I nodded. How could I forget such important information? "Tickle the pear in the painting down in the basement."

"Exactly," he tapped my nose. "The house elves will be more than happy to give you as much peanut butter as you want."

I hugged him, then turned and ran up the stairs.

"What have we here?" she heard him ask. He must have discovered Aerilyn, sitting by the door, hugging her knees to her chest and waiting patiently.

I pushed open my bedroom door. I just recently moved into my very own bedroom. Up until this past summer, I had shared with Aerilyn, which was fine, but I had wanted my own space. So my parents had converted their upstairs office into a bedroom, putting the office furniture in other places around the house. The desk went into their room because "they were the parents," and dad needed a space to work from home. The bookshelf went downstairs in the living room, which already had a bookshelf, but according to mum, a room could never have too many bookshelves.

I bit my lip and double checked the things on my list to bring to school. Books, school supplies, clothes, my school uniform, my wand, pocket money, my Hogsmeade permission form; I had all of it.

After a quick scan of my room, I dumped a small bag of Ton Tongue Toffees into my trunk. Dad had given me some with a wink when I had gone to spend a day at work with him two weeks ago. He had made me promise to not mention it to mum; a promise I had kept faithfully.

"Lissie, have you seen my left shoe?" Cameron barged into my room, hopping on one shoe-clad foot and holding his other one up in the air.

"Didn't mum tell you to check under Finn's bed?"

"Yes, but he says it's not there!"

"Did you actually look or did you rely on what Finn said?"

"I didn't bother to look. Who knows what's growing under there?" Cameron wrinkled his nose.

He had a point. Between the two boys, Cameron was the neater one. He was actually very neat for a boy. I was incredibly neat and organized too, just like mum.

With a sigh, I marched into the room two doors down the hall that the boys shared. Finn was just closing his trunk. Cameron's lay already closed on top of his bed.

"Have you seen a shoe? Cameron's lost one." I pointed at Cameron's bare foot as he hopped into view behind me.

"I already told him I haven't seen it," Finn answered, but his ears were turning red and a smirk was tugging at his lips. I would've known he was lying anyway. We are triplets after all.

I knelt down beside his bed and peered under it. "Is that broccoli?"

"Maybe," Finn answered. I knew he was shrugging even though I couldn't see him. Finn had never liked broccoli, and yet there were a few pieces of it under his bed.

"Why is it under your bed?"

"When mum made it last week, she said I had to finish it before I left the table. I was the only one left sitting there. I was lonely and didn't want my broccoli, so when she wasn't looking, I stuck it in my pocket."

"And it ended up under your bed."

"If I threw it out, she would see it in the garbage."

I sighed. "I'd get rid of it if I were you. Feed it to Dobby or something." Dobby was the owl that the Finn, Cameron and I shared. We had chosen the name after hearing all about the elf when mum and dad had told us "the story" about six years ago.

Aerilyn had gotten her own owl just before school started. She had named him Percy, after our uncle. The logic behind the name was that Uncle Percy was as wise as an owl. I could remember dad laughing his head off when Aerilyn chose the name and mum giving him a look, but trying not to smile.

I desperately wanted an owl of my own, but for now I was stuck sharing with my two brothers. I didn't want to complain too much, though because I _had_ just gotten my own room after all.

A few seconds later, I found Cameron's left shoe and tossed it to him. He caught it and slid it onto his foot.

"Mum and Dad said we're leaving," Aerilyn said, appearing in the doorway. "Dad says he can carry your trunks downstairs to the car if you want."

"We can take ours," Finn and Cameron said at once.

"Lissie? What should I tell dad? Do you want him to carry yours?"

"I can do it," I shrugged. Returning to my room, I closed my trunk and grabbed my broomstick. I'm on the Quidditch team with Finn and Cameron. They're Beaters and I'm a Chaser. This year will be our second year on the team.

With my free hand, I grabbed the trunk's handle and dragged it out to the hallway towards the stairs.

Finn and Cameron were already there. Finn was sitting on top of his trunk while Cameron attempted to push it down the stairs.

"Makeshift sled," Finn said, grinning at me.

"Mum's going to get so mad," I hissed. It was true. Mum definitely wouldn't like this. It was dangerous. That's where she crossed the line.

"Mum won't have to know," Cameron grunted, still struggling to push the trunk.

"She'll know when she hears thumping or when your break your leg."

"I'll be fine. It's just like sledding." Finn shrugged.

Cameron finally managed to move the trunk. With a yell of excitement, Finn threw his fists in the air, his yell sounding bumpy as he bounced on every step.

"My turn!" Cameron declared, getting settled on his own trunk as Finn moved out of the way at the bottom of the stairs. "Lissie, give me a push."

I finally cracked into a smile and shrugged. What the heck, right? It _did _look fun. I shoved Cameron's trunk down the stairs. At that moment, mum came out of the kitchen. What rotten luck. "Mum, watch out!" I yelled with a grimace, but it was too late. Cameron and his trunk collided with her, knocking her over.

"Are you okay?" Cameron asked, standing up and looking down at his mother.

I charged down the stairs, dragging my trunk behind me. Aerilyn followed, looking scared. We looked down into her mother's face. "Mum?" I asked.

I watched as she pointed a finger at Cameron. Finn peered around the banister, trying to stay out of trouble. "You," she said as Cameron flinched, "are just like your father for doing something like this."

Cameron's face relaxed as Finn and I began to laugh.

"You two," mum sat up and pointed at the two of us, "are just like your father for thinking this is funny."

"Alright, are we ready to—what is going on?" dad asked slowly, coming out of the kitchen. "Aud, why are you on the floor?"

"I'm fine," she waved her hand in front of her face nonchalantly. "I just got barreled over by an amateur Santa. Thankfully I wasn't seriously hurt. You kids do realize how dangerous that was, don't you?"

"Yes, Mum," Finn said.

"I don't want you to do that ever again, understand?"

"We understand," I chorused along with her brothers. Aerilyn gave a small laugh from behind me. She loved seeing us get in trouble. She got into her fair share of trouble as well. She was a Weasley after all. She was just more like mum; level headed and reasonable. She knew where to draw the line. I had more of a sense of that too I suppose, but I can be easily convinced.

"You were sledding down the stairs?" Dad asked.

I looked up at him. He actually looked as if he were wondering why he never thought of such a thing.

"Do _not_ think of trying it," mum scolded, standing up.

"Why would you accuse me of such a thing?" Dad gasped dramatically. "I am a grown man!"

"That's never stopped you before."

"True," he shrugged.

I laughed as mum playfully swatted dad's arm. My parents got along so well. I suppose it came from knowing each other practically since birth and coming eerily close to losing each other during a war.

"I'd like to get a move on," Finn said loudly as dad leaned down to kiss mum.

"Leave them alone, Finny," Aerilyn demanded.

"Don't call me Finny. It's embarrassing."

"You secretly love it," I said, punching his shoulder.

"No, I don't," he argued.

"I believe he does," Cameron said, adjusting his glasses. He had started needing glasses a few years ago, shortly after he began school. He and Finn had been incredibly disappointed because now they were no longer able to trade places during classes. According to dad, Cameron had received Percy's awful eyesight.

Other than the glasses, Finn and Cameron looked exactly the same. The same floppy red hair, bright blue eyes, and freckles. I would have looked exactly like them as well, if I were a boy. I _was_ their triplet after all, except for the minor fact that I was a different gender. I still had the matching red hair (longer of course), freckles, and blue eyes.

Aerilyn, on the other hand, was almost a spitting image of mum with brown hair, hardly any freckles, and brown eyes. My brothers and I had some similarities to our mother. Our smile, nose, eye shape, and jaw, for example.

"I do not!" Finn was whining now.

"You do!" Aerilyn teased. "Finny, Finny, Finny," she began chanting.

"Shut it," Finn growled.

"And the arguments begin," mum sighed. "I knew we wouldn't be able to get through the morning without one."

"Oi, listen up!" Everyone stopped talking at the sound of dad's voice. "We're going to go outside nice and orderly. Then we're going to get into the car nice and orderly. We're going to drive to King's cross nice and orderly. You're going to get on the train nice and orderly. Then you can be as wild and crazy as you wish."

"Fred," mum groaned as we all cheered.

"Let's go," dad declared, marching out of the front door. "I'm excited to show off my new Muggle driving skills."

"I'm going to Hogwarts, I'm going to Hogwarts!" Aerilyn chanted in the car.

"We know," Cameron groaned. "Put a sock in it already."

"Don't talk to your sister like that," dad glanced in the rearview mirror. "Be nice."

"Fine," Cameron huffed. "Aerilyn, please place a cloth foot covering inside of your mouth so that you will not be loud and annoying."

"That's not what I meant," dad grumbled as mum laughed.

Once we reached King's Cross, and dad had parked the car, I jumped out immediately. I hopped from one foot to the other as my parents put our trunks on rolling carts so that we could wheel them.

"Finally," I sighed when they were ready.

"I'm going to Hogwarts," Aerilyn was whispering now. She looked pale.

"Don't be nervous, Air," I said comfortingly. "Air" had always been Aerilyn's nickname, given to her by none other than dad.

"I see Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione!" Finn yelled once we had all disappeared through the barrier. Aerilyn looked as if she were going to fall over from excitement, nerves and wonder.

"Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny too!" I added, pointing.

"Don't go anywhere just yet," mum said. "We'll all walk over together. I don't want you getting lost. It's crowded."

"Mum, you and dad walk so slowly," Cameron complained.

"We do not," Fred argued. "You just walk too fast. Your mum and I like to enjoy the scenery while you just blast through it."

We made our way over to where Uncle Ron, Uncle Harry, Aunt Hermione, and Aunt Ginny were standing, surrounded by their own children, my cousins. James was starting his second year, and Albus and Rose were starting their first year, just like Aerilyn. Hugo and Lily wouldn't start for another two years.

James was the first one to notice us coming closer. He tugged on his father's sleeve and pointed before running up to us. He wanted to show us his new owl.

"Look, her name is Alpine and she's a snowy owl," he said proudly. "My dad's favorite."

"Cool," Aerilyn said. "This is Percy." She held up her own owl. "He's named after Uncle Percy."

"I'm sure he'll be honored," James said seriously. "Let's go find a compartment and put our luggage in it. I want to see if I can find Mark." Mark was Lee Jordan's son. He was in James' year and they were really close friends.

"Okay, let's go," I agreed excitedly.

"We're going to go find a compartment and put our luggage in it," James yelled to our parents. He ran off, followed by me and my brothers. I had always been a fast runner. I could almost outrun Finn. Almost. Now, though, we were being slowed down by our trunks.

"Don't forget to come back so we can embarrass you by kissing you goodbye!" I heard dad yell after us.

Finn stuck his tongue out in dad's direction as we disappeared into the thick steam from the train.

"I know, so embarrassing," I agreed.

We formed an assembly line to get our trunks onto the train, and then found a compartment. Since it wasn't crowded yet, we pretty much had pick of the whole train.

Once we had chosen a compartment, James stopped us from leaving. "I have an idea," he said. His eyes were twinkling mischievously. I knew what that meant. I had seen that look too many times on the faces of my brothers. It most likely even appeared on her my own face from time to time. Maybe even more than that.

"What?" Finn and Cameron asked excitedly.

"Your parents told you 'the story,' didn't they?"

We nodded. "Yeah, years ago," I said. "Why?"

"Well, I've been thinking. Why don't we try to do what our parents did? You know, recreate their adventures."

"So you want us to get Professor Lupin out under a full moon, find a time turner to go back in time, and get some Azkaban dementors to try and steal Sirius' soul again?" I asked. "That would be too much work and trouble. Not to mention dangerous."

"Well we don't have to do it exactly," James shrugged, waving his hand impatiently. "I was thinking more along the lines of simply _visiting_ the tunnel under the Whomping Willow. We can go in order. We start with the trapdoor in the third floor corridor. Then, we go into the Chamber of Secrets, the Whomping Willow, the-,"

I interrupted. "We can't fight a dragon or go through the maze. The maze is gone now anyway."

"I was going to say the lake. We can get our hands on some gillyweed and go for a little swim with the mermaids," James smirked. He plowed on before I could interrupt again. "Then, we go into the Room of Requirement, asking it for a place to practice defending ourselves so we can see the exact meeting place of the DA. Then we can visit Dumbledore's tomb since we can't exactly travel to the cave ourselves. We can even go into the Forbidden Forest and look for Grandpa Weasley's car. And maybe we'll find some unicorns or giant spiders."

"Aragog died," Finn said.

"But his family didn't," James smirked.

"And then what?" I asked. "We can't travel the countryside or break into the Ministry, or get captured by Snatchers. We can't start reenacting an entire battle."

James seemed to be stumped now, but then he snapped his fingers. "Our parents always bring us to Grandma and Grandpa Weasley's house for Christmas Eve, right? Well, we visit the cave where Uncle Fred and Aunt Auden first started doing Potterwatch with Uncle George, Aunt Katie, Lee and Angelina."

"And the tree house," I added. I had always loved going into the tree house every time I visited my grandparents' house. Well, _houses_ actually since both sets of her grandparents lived right next door to each other. It was a huge convenience.

"If you want," James answered, shrugging as if he couldn't care less about the tree house. All he liked to do up there was pretend it was a ship, or a castle, or a cabin in the woods, which was fine most of the time, but sometimes I just liked to sit up there and look at the stars.

"Lissie just likes it because it's where mum and dad got engaged," Finn teased.

"So what?" I answered. It was true. It was also one of the only facts I knew about my parents' relationship. They hadn't told the whole story yet.

"So are you in?" James asked, holding out his hand, palm down.

"We're in," we answered at once, putting our hands on top of James'.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm having a lot of fun with this story so far. It's hard to keep track of all the kids, but I like how there's so many of them. Don't forget to review and let me know what you think! **

**I don't own Harry Potter.**

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><p>Once we had made our agreement, the four of us clambered off the train to go find our parents again. I did a double take as we passed two people standing near the wall. One was my cousin, Victoire. She was leaning against the wall and Teddy Lupin, Uncle Harry's godson, was standing in front of her and they were kissing!<p>

"Oh look!" I said happily. It was probably a bad idea. It drew the boys' attention to the couple and I had almost forgotten that they were the last people that would find the scenario romantic. Finn and Cameron let out quiet laughs and nudged each other. James' mouth dropped open.

"They're kissing!" he said.

"Good observation," Finn said, rolling his eyes. "I never knew the proper name for tonsil chess."

I smiled. Tonsil chess was what mum had called kissing when we saw a couple locked at the lips at the train station on the first day of school for me and my brothers. Finn had obnoxiously screamed, "Ew!" Mum and I had simultaneously shushed him.

"But that's Teddy! And he's kissing Victoire. _Cousin_ Victoire!" James' eyes widened.

"Yes, very good," Cameron said, already bored with the news. "And it's quite disgusting, yes."

James didn't make a response. He marched straight over to Victoire and Teddy, despite the fact that I told him to come back. We could hear him from halfway across the station as he interrupted them.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

I bit my lip as Teddy and Victoire looked down at him. Teddy looked annoyed and Victoire looked as if she wanted to laugh.

"I'm seeing Victoire off," Teddy said. "Now go away."

"But why? I didn't even know you liked each other!"

I couldn't take it anymore. "James, please come back here. Leave them alone."

James sighed and marched back over to us. "He said he's 'seeing her off.'"

"We heard," I answered. "Now come on. The train's going to leave any minute and we have to say goodbye to our parents."

"That reminds me! I have to tell mum and dad about Teddy and Victoire!" James took off at a run. I shared a glance with Finn and Cameron and with a simultaneous roll of our eyes we took off after our cousin.

"Guess who we just saw?" he asked when he finally reached them. Finn, Cameron and I caught up to him, panting.

"Who?" Uncle Harry asked.

"Teddy and Victoire and they were kissing! Our cousin Victoire and Teddy Lupin! Kissing!"

"Oh, how lovely," Lily said.

"I think so too," I answered, grinning.

"Well personally I thought it was quite-," Finn began.

"Disgusting," Cameron finished. "Both of them are practically our-,"

"Family," Finn said.

"Wouldn't it be lovely if they got married?" Lily asked. "Teddy would really be family then."

"He already comes over for dinner every other night," Uncle Harry laughed.

"But listen!" James said loudly. "I asked them what they were doing and Teddy said he was just saying goodbye and then he told me to go away."

"You interrupted them?" Aunt Ginny asked. "You are so like Ron."

"Which isn't always a bad thing," Uncle Ron added, returning from getting Rose on the train. She was sticking her head out of the window talking to Aunt Hermione. I noticed our cousins Shannon and Matthew on the train and waved to them. They were Uncle George's kids.

The train's whistle blew, warning everyone that it was almost time to leave. I saw Aerilyn tugging on mum's sleeve anxiously, probably wanting to talk to her before we left, so I turned to dad first. "Bye dad," I said, throwing my arms around him.

"Bye Liss," he answered. He glanced at mum. "Did you remember to pack the goods?" He smirked at me.

Knowing he meant the Ton Tongue Toffees, I nodded. "They're in my trunk, begging to be used on Filch."

"Good, now don't be afraid to use some on Mrs. Norris as well. George and I have never tested them on animals, so it could be interesting. Actually, we've never tested any of our products on animals. Be sure to write and tell me the results."

"Mum won't know a thing?" I asked, making sure.

"We'll keep our fingers crossed," dad winked. I smiled and hugged him again.

"Lissie, move, it's our turn to hug dad," Finn and Cameron whined.

Dad and I laughed and I moved out of the way. I hugged Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione, Aunt Ginny, Uncle Harry, Uncle Ben, Aunt Marnie, and Aunt Katie. Lastly, I hugged Uncle George. I saved him for last purposely so that I could tell him about the plan to test the toffees on Mrs. Norris.

I whispered the plan into his ear and he chuckled. "Don't forget to snap a picture with that new camera of yours."

I smiled. For my thirteenth birthday in June, Uncle George had given me a camera. He had told me to use it well and using it to document pranks was definitely a good use if I did say so myself.

"I won't forget," I answered.

Finn, Cameron and I hugged mum at the same time, nearly knocking her over. "Bye, Mum," we said.

I followed Finn and Cameron onto the train and joined the rest of my cousins in leaning out the windows.

"Now don't forget," Uncle Harry said. "Hagrid says you're all welcome for tea any time."

"I wouldn't advise you to eat his food, but you should at least be polite and fake it," Mum added.

"What's wrong with his food?" Rose asked.

"It'll break your teeth," Aunt Hermione said, "and Grandma and Grandpa Granger wouldn't be too happy if you came home for Christmas with broken teeth, Rosie.."

"Remember to beat out Scorpius Malfoy in every test," Uncle Ron added, pointing his finger at all of us. "And stay away from giant spiders and blast ended skrewts."

I glanced at James but his face was neutral. He was a good actor, that boy. No one would ever guess we planned to actually go looking for giant spiders.

"Giant spiders? Where?" Finn asked. I snorted. As if he didn't know.

"Can we bring one home?" Cameron asked.

"Absolutely not," mum said, shaking her head.

"Yeah, listen to your mum," Uncle Ron mumbled. I smirked. I had forgotten Uncle Ron was afraid of spiders. I was going to have to pay Zonko's a visit on the first trip to Hogsmeade. Between Finn, Cameron and I, their rubber spider section would be empty in record time.

"What about a toilet seat? Can we bring one of those back home?" I asked, smirking and staring right at my parents. They shared a look.

"How did you find out about that?" Dad asked.

"When you took us to the shop I saw it hanging above the fireplace in the flat," I shrugged. "I got Uncle George to tell me the story."

"In my defense, it's hard to say no to those kids," George said.

Mum laughed and shook her head. "Stay out of trouble. All of you."

"Not completely out of trouble, though," Dad added. "Don't forget to prank Scorpious any chance you get and anyone else who gets on your nerves. I'll send you some Skiving Snackboxes next week."

"Yes!" Finn, Cameron and I cheered.

"You'll do no such thing," mum turned to dad and glared at him.

"How else are they going to get their pranking supplies?" dad asked.

Mum closed her eyes and sighed, but a smile formed on her face.

"Don't forget to send Neville our love," Aunt Ginny reminded us.

"We can't give a professor love!" James protested.

"But you know Neville."

"Outside, yeah," I told her, "but at school he's Professor Longbottom, isn't he?"

"We can't walk into Herbology and give him love!" James added, sticking his tongue out as if he were disgusted.

"Of course you can," Aunt Hermione said.

"No, they can't," Uncle George argued as Uncle Ron nodded by his side. "That's just downright embarrassing."

"Fine, then don't give him any love," Aunt Ginny huffed. "Just completely ignore him and act like you don't know him at all."

"At least ask him how Luna's doing," mum said.

"No, we're not going to ask a professor about his wife." Finn rolled his eyes.

"Why not?" Dad asked.

"Because that's almost as bad as giving him love!" Cameron answered. The train was beginning to pull away now.

"Everyone's staring at you, dad!" James said excitedly. "They know, don't they?"

"No, it's me," Uncle Ron said. "I'm extremely famous, too, you know."

"For what?" Rose yelled, snorting as the train slowly moved further away.

"For the best game of chess Hogwarts has ever seen!" Uncle Ron yelled back, waving.

We all waved back until we could no longer see our family. After that, we turned to go into our compartments. Seeing as there were twelve of us, we couldn't all fit in one compartment, so we had planned it out to get compartments across from each other. We had already put our luggage in the compartments in order to save them.

The twelve of us didn't include the older cousins, though. By 'older cousins' I mean Victoire, Dominiquie, Kaylee, Lucy, and Louis. We were close of course, but since there were so many cousins, ranging in age from sixteen to nine, we kind of had little groups within our own age brackets. You'll just have to bear with me for a little lesson about my family.

Victoire, Dominique, and Louis were Uncle Bill's kids. They were sixteen, fifteen and fourteen. Victoire had her own friends that she liked to hang out with a lot. Dominique hung out with Kaylee, who was Uncle Ben's oldest, and Lucy, who was Uncle Percy's oldest, since they were all the same age. Fourteen year old Louis liked to tag along with them sometimes when he wasn't with his own friends.

Those were the older cousins. Then there were the third years, which were me, Finn, Cameron, Shannon and Matthew, who were Uncle George's twins, Uncle Percy's youngest daughter, Molly, and Uncle Ben's youngest, Brad. Finn, Cameron and I were closest to Brad, Shannon and Matthew, but tried to spend time with Molly when we could. She was quiet like her mother, and studious like Uncle Percy, while the rest of the third year cousins were more outgoing.

James was the only second year in our family, but he hung out with us so much, and acted older than he was, so we sometimes forgot he was a whole year younger than we were. He was also outgoing and energetic. He also spent a lot of time with his friend Mark when he wasn't hanging out with us. He said that he 'sometimes needed a break from family.'

Aerilyn, along with Uncle George's youngest daughter, Raina, Uncle Harry's youngest, Albus, and Uncle Ron's youngest, Rose, were just starting at Hogwarts this year. It was obvious that they were glad to have each other as they went off to school. Lastly, Hugo and Lily were only nine and they would be the last to attend Hogwarts.

I slid into the compartment where I had put my luggage, joining Shannon, Matthew, James, and my brothers who were already inside. As I shut the door, I glanced across the aisle to the other compartment, where Aerilyn was. I had promised to look out for her. Finn and Cameron had promised as well and I knew they would, but sometimes they forgot, especially when they were with James or their friends.

Aerilyn was happily sitting in between Raina and Rose. They were all showing each other their new wands. I smiled. I remembered that feeling of getting a brand new wand.

"Lissie, come on, we're going to figure out our plan of action," James said dramatically.

I turned from the doorway and sat down next to Finn. I put my feet up on the seat across from me, in between Matt and Shannon.

"Feast your eyes upon these sausages," I said, kicking off my shoe and wiggling my toes.

"Cheesy sausages," Shannon corrected, pinching her nose and giggling.

"I'll say," Finn said. I punched him in the arm. My feet were _not_ stinky. I promise. Finn's the one who really has the stinky feet.

"Okay," James said, standing up and positioning himself in front of the window. He clapped his hands together to get us to be quiet. This is what I meant by him acting older than he was.

The train lurched and James almost fell sideways, but he straightened himself and cleared his throat.

"Well, I already filled Shannon and Matt in on what we're doing and they're in as well," James began.

"What's the plan, then?" I asked.

"I think we should try to do one thing a month," Matt said, leaning back in his seat. "We're at Hogwarts from September 1st until June 24th. Exams start the 20th, so we have up until the 19th to complete this plan. If we subtract a few days devoted completely to studying, it gives us about eight and a half months. We're on Christmas break from December 23rd until January 7th, so if we're planning on doing the cave over the holiday, that gets rid of the month of December. Now we're down to seven months."

That was Matt for you; the math genius. He had just figured that all out in less than a minute and all in his head. He was just like Uncle George, who had always been good at measurements and Potions.

"Okay," I said. "I stood on my seat and reached into my trunk, pulling out paper and a quill. "So for the month of September what are we going to do?"

"The trapdoor," James said. "I think we should go in order, except for the cave of course, since that needs to be done during Christmas break."

"No, we shouldn't go completely in order," I said, tapping my chin. "I mean, we have to think of the weather conditions. Do we really want to go into the Forbidden Forest or into the lake during one of the winter months?"

Matt shivered. "No thank you."

"Exactly," I said.

"I still want to do the cave during Christmas break," James said defiantly. "If Aunt Auden and Uncle Fred could do Potterwatch there during the winter then we can too. Plus, it'll give us something to do during the break and it's the only time we're home besides when we come home in June."

"Fine," I sighed. I wrote down the name of every month from September to June. Next to December, I wrote 'Potterwatch Cave.' "What if we do the tree house for January?" I suggested.

"Come on, Liss, that's not anything special," Finn whined. "We've been up there millions of times."

"Do you have any other ideas?" I asked.

"No," he mumbled.

"Think about it," I said. "Our parents used to hang out there as kids. My parents got engaged there and I'm sure there's more to it. I mean, why would my dad propose there if it wasn't special? I wish I knew the story, but my parents haven't told us yet. Maybe we can convince them over the Christmas holiday so we'll be prepared for January."

"Fine," James waved his hand around impatiently. I smiled and wrote 'tree house' next to the month of January.

"Let's do the trapdoor, Chamber of Secrets, and the Whomping Willow tunnel during September, October, and November," Shannon suggested.

"Everyone agree?" I asked. Everyone nodded, so I wrote them down.

We agreed on the lake for March, the Forbidden Forest for April, and Dumbledore's tomb for May. That left February and June empty.

"Since we have exams in June, maybe that should be the one month we don't do anything. February should be the Room of Requirement," Cameron said, adjusting his glasses.

I wrote it down. "Okay, well that's everything." I suddenly gasped dramatically.

"What is it?" James asked.

I stood on my seat and reached into my trunk again. I pulled out my camera from Uncle George. I also pulled out a pile of paper. I stared at the paper, biting my lip and wondering how I was going to do what I wanted to do. I didn't know the magic for it just yet. I suddenly had an idea. Jumping up, I ran out of the compartment.

"Lissie, wait!" I heard Finn yell. But I didn't wait. I ran into the compartment across the aisle.

"Rosie," I said gently. "May I have the ribbon in your hair?" She had a light blue ribbon tying her reddish brown hair back.

"Forever?" she asked.

"Yes," I nodded.

She bit her lip. "Why?"

"It's for a good cause, trust me," I said impatiently, holding out my hand.

"What's the good cause?" Raina asked.

"You aren't going to tie it around Finn's head are you?" Aerilyn asked.

"No," I answered.

"Cameron's?"

"No," I said again.

"James?"

I shook my head. "No, and not Matt's either. It's for something else. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday if you'll just please give me the ribbon."

Rose stared at me, but slowly pulled the ribbon loose from her hair. I took it and with a quick thank you, I ran out of the compartment and down the train, looking in each compartment until I found Victoire. She was the oldest and she would know how to do the magic I needed.

"Victoire, I need you," I said.

"Is someone hurt?" she asked immediately.

"No," I shook my head and thrust the pile of paper and the ribbon at her.

"What's this?" She shared a glance with her friends, who looked just as lost as she did.

"Do you know how to use magic to make this into a book? You know, with the holes in the paper and the ribbon tied through so it opens like a book."

"Yeah, I can do that," she said slowly, nodding. "Why, what are you up to?"

"You'll find out later when it's done," I said quickly.

She looked at me for a moment before picking up her wand and waving it over the paper and the ribbon. When she was done, it was exactly how I imagined it. "Thanks Vic," I said, rushing back towards my own compartment, where I collapsed into my seat, beaming.

"Explain," Cameron said at once.

"What's that?" Shannon asked.

I held it up. "A book."

"It's a pile of paper tied with a ribbon. Not much of a book if you ask me," James said.

"It's a makeshift book. We obviously can't make a real book, so this will do."

"Why are we making a book anyway? We were talking about Operation Repeat History," Matt said.

"Operation Repeat History?" I asked.

"Yeah, we named it while you were gone," Finn said. He had slid down in his seat and was sticking his wand in his bellybutton. Disgusting, if you ask me.

"Okay, so I was thinking that every time we do something on this list," I said, holding up our list, "I can take a picture of it and we can put the picture in this book and we can each write something about our experience. There's also enough paper for us to add a collage of pictures of our pranks and anything else exciting."

"Brilliant!" James exclaimed, sitting up. "It'll be our whole year documented in that one book!"

The others were excited about my idea as well. Using a sticking charm, I stuck our list to the first page of our makeshift book. I spent the next half hour of the train ride decorating the front cover. At the top, in my neat handwriting, I wrote _Hogwarts: A History_. Right below that, in parenthesis, I wrote _our way. _I left a blank space in the middle. I planned to take a picture of Hogwarts when we got there and put that in the blank space. At the bottom, I wrote our names. James Potter, Finn Weasley, Cameron Weasley, Felicity Weasley, Shannon Weasley, and Matt Weasley. I also made sure to add color and little doodles in the corners.

I looked up as a flash went off. James had taken my camera and it was aimed at me.

"I just documented you hard at work, Lissie," he said, handing the camera back. I smiled and aimed the camera back at him. He stuck out his tongue and I snapped the picture.

Next, I took a picture of Finn and Cameron and one of Matt and Shannon. Matt even took one of me hugging Finn. I'd have to make sure to keep that one safe when I developed it because knowing Finn, he'd try to rip it up.

Just then, a familiar voice floated down the train. "Anything from the trolley?"

"Excellent, the food lady," James said.

"She is not 'the food lady,' James," Shannon said with a sigh. "She's, well, she's the witch who pushes the trolley." She blinked as she realized that wasn't much better of a name.

"I wonder if she has a real name," Finn said as he rummaged in his pocket for money.

"Of course she does," I answered, pulling out my own money. "I'm sure her parents didn't name her 'witch who pushes the trolley.'"

"Unless of course," Cameron said, "her last name is 'trolley,' her first name is 'witch,' and her middle name is 'who pushes.'"

"That is entirely possible," Matt said.

"Whatever her name is, she's almost at our compartment," Shannon said.

"Me first!" James cried.

"No, me!" Finn, Cameron and I said at once.

"No way," Shannon and Matt said together. We all scrambled for the door and had a small scuffle. I won, but only because I stepped on a few toes and elbowed a few stomachs. It was all in good fun, though.

"One bag of Bertie Bott's Beans, and two chocolate frogs, please," I said with a smile.

"Certainly, dear," the witch whose name was unknown said.

I paid her and she gave me my candy. As I sat down, I heard James ordering his candy. When he was done, he paused before blurting out "What's your name?"

"My name?" she asked.

"Yes," James said. I looked up. Shannon, Matt, Finn and Cameron were all staring expectantly at the witch as if this were the news of the year. I giggled. I had to say, I was interested as well.

"It's Margaret," she said, "but everyone calls me Maggie."

"Well thank you Maggie," James said, holding up his candy.

"You are very welcome," she chuckled.

Once she had moved on down the train, Finn shut the door again and sat down. "Maggie," he said. "That fits her."

I picked up our book and opened up to the front inside cover. At the top, I wrote _Answers to the Burning Questions We Have about Hogwarts_.

"Number one," I said, reading each word aloud as I wrote. "The witch who pushes the trolley on the Hogwarts Express has a name. It is Margaret, but everyone calls her Maggie."

"Weird," Shannon and Matt said together.

"Wonderful," James said.

"Wicked," Finn, Cameron and I said. I grinned. Weird, wonderful and wicked were our three favorite 'W' words. The six of high fived at once. It sounds impossible, but it isn't. We made it possible by standing in a circle and using each hand to high five the two people on either side of us. We always looked incredibly odd, but it was great fun. I laughed and looked down at our homemade book. This was going to be brilliant.


	3. Chapter 3

"Where's Professor McGonagall with those first years?" James complained. "I'm starving."

"They'll be here any minute," I said, trying to snatch Finn's fork out of his hand. He was sitting with his head propped on one hand while he gently poked his face with the fork in his other hand. "Plus, James, three of 'those first years' are your cousins and one of them is your brother. Aren't you excited to see them get sorted?"

"Of course, but it's just the waiting that gets to me," he said with a sigh. "Once they get here, I'll be distracted from my hunger, and then once the Sorting is done, the food will appear, so we just need them to hurry up and get here."

"You're always hungry," I said with a sigh.

"Dad says I'm like Uncle Ron," he said proudly.

"Okay," I answered vaguely. I scanned the Gryffindor table. Victoire was sitting at the end of the table nearest the door with her friends. Dominique was sitting a few seats down with Kaylee, Lucy, and Louis. I was sitting in the middle of the table, in between Finn and Cameron. James, Brad, Shannon and Matt sat across from us. Molly was sitting three seats down from me with her friends. I always liked to keep track of my cousins on the first feast of the school year. It was comforting to know that I had family here and more were arriving almost every year.

Next, I scanned the staff table. Professor Lupin was there. He had gotten the job as the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher once again after the war ended and he was my favorite teacher. I know it sounds biased since he's practically considered family but he really is an incredible teacher. Hagrid was at the table as well and he gave me a friendly wave that I happily returned. The chair in the very middle was empty. It belonged to Professor McGonagall. She had taken over the position of headmistress but she still taught Transfiguration and insisted on doing the sorting every year even though other teachers had offered to do it.

Finally, the doors opened, and Professor McGonagall entered, leading a mob of first years forward. They were so _little_! Certainly I hadn't been that little when I was eleven.

"Were we that little when we first came to Hogwarts?" Finn whispered, voicing my thoughts.

"No, we couldn't have been," I said, shaking my head. "I think they get smaller every year. They must. There's no other explanation."

I spotted Aerilyn, Rose, Raina and Albus in the crowd. They were all walking together in a row, which was no surprise.

Finn and Cameron were drumming their fingers on the table. I knew they were getting impatient. They only cared about seeing our relatives get sorted and most of them were at the very end of the alphabet, with the exception of Albus, who was kind of in the middle.

I have to admit, though, I was bored myself once Professor McGonagall had reached the B's. I picked up my plate and twirled it in my fingers. I set it back down on the table and picked up my spoon, exhaling on it and sticking it on my nose. I tapped Finn on the shoulder.

"Lissie," he giggled.

I turned to Cameron and crossed my eyes. He burst into silent laughter and hid behind his hand. James lifted his head off his arms and saw me, his mouth stretching into a grin.

Within five minutes, James, Brad, Shannon, Matt, Finn, Cameron and I all had our spoons dangling from our noses. We were currently having a contest to see who could keep their spoon on the longest.

There was a tap on my shoulder. I jumped and turned quickly, my spoon falling off in the process. It was Victoire.

"Aw, Vic, you made my spoon fall!" I complained.

"Lissie, you're out of the game," James said happily.

I leaned forward and knocked his spoon off his face. "Take that, James."

"No fair, that's cheating, I'm still in!"

"Lissie," Victoire said impatiently. I had almost forgotten she was there.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'm telling you to stop dangling the spoons from your noses. You've got half of Gryffindor house trying to do it too." She pointed and I looked up. She was right. All down the table, people could be seen trying to stick the spoons to their noses. "Imagine how this must look. Gryffindor doesn't look very well behaved at all." Victoire was one of the sixth year prefects and she was always trying to follow the rules. She wasn't very good at enforcing them though. She wasn't the bossy type.

"Oh well," I shrugged. "Here, Vic, try it." I stuck my spoon on her nose. She just closed her eyes, sighed, and walked away, my spoon still dangling from her tiny nose. I didn't have a spoon now, though. It looked like I either wouldn't be having soup, or I'd have to drink from the bowl. Of course, that depended on what the soup was, of course and if I wanted it or not.

"Albus Potter," Professor McGonagall called.

I quickly turned towards the stool at the front of the room. Albus was emerging from the crowd. His legs were shaking. Poor Albus. According to James, he had been incredibly worried about where the sorting hat would place him.

The hat sank down over Albus's eyes. His small hands were gripping the edges of the stool and even from where I was sitting I could see his knuckles turning white.

Everything was quiet for a moment, but I knew that the sorting hat was whispering into his ear in that low, startling voice. The brim of the hat suddenly opened. I held my breath. "Gryffindor!" the hat yelled.

I clapped along with the rest of the Gryffindors as Albus happily made himself comfortable at one of the empty seats down at the front end of the table. Finn, Cameron and James were standing up and whistling. After a moment, the cheering died down and Professor McGonagall moved on to the next student on the list.

I grabbed my napkin, crumpled it up, and threw it halfway down the table with incredible aim. It hit Albus right in the back of the head. He turned around and his eyes found mine. "Congratulations!" I mouthed. He grinned, mouthed a thank you back to me, before turning back to the front. I smiled, knowing how relieved he must be now that he had gotten the sorting over with.

Suddenly, I realized that now I didn't have a napkin as well as a spoon. If I kept it up, I would end up without a plate or utensils and I wouldn't be eating tonight. If that happened, I decided that I would just steal food from my brothers. It was always good to have a plan B.

Finally, Professor McGonagall made it to the end of her list. The W's to be exact. "Aerilyn Weasley," she said.

I grabbed a handful of Finn's robes at his shoulder and stuck the nail of my index finger in my mouth nervously. I had a habit of doing that when I was nervous.

"Let go," Finn said, uncurling my fingers. "You can just relax. She'll be in Gryffindor. All of our family has been for ages."

That did little to calm me down. I knew Aerilyn would be upset if she was in any house besides Gryffindor. She would hate to be the odd one out. She was my little sister and I was nervous because she was nervous.

She certainly didn't look nervous, though. She had always been good at looking confident, even if she had to fake it. The only way I knew that she was nervous now was because I noticed her twisting her ring around her finger. Mum does that too, but she uses her engagement and wedding rings. I met Aerilyn's eyes as she sat down on the stool and we smiled at each other. The Sorting Hat slipped over her eyes, like it had for Albus, and probably every other first year who had ever sat on that stool.

I smirked to myself as I thought of what the hat was probably saying to her. It was probably making a comment about how she was another Weasley. That's what it had said for me anyway. I wonder if the hat was sick of sorting so many Weasley family members. Could the hat even feel emotions? It was a hat, but on the other hand, it was an intelligent hat that could talk.

"Gryffindor!" the hat yelled. I smiled in relief. Finn, Cameron and James were cheering and whistling again. I saw Aerilyn blush and shoot them a 'stop it' look, but it did nothing to get them to stop. She sat down next to Albus and smoothed out her skirt.

Raina and then Rose were called up to be sorted next. They were both put in Gryffindor, much to their relief.

"Finally, time for food," James said, once the sorting had finished a few minutes later. He stared at his plate expectantly, waiting for food to appear.

"Not yet," I said, pointing at Professor McGonagall, who was now standing in front of her chair at the staff table, about to make the start of term speech.

"I'd like to welcome all of the new students to Hogwarts," she said, "and also welcome back all of the returning students."

James let out a frustrated sigh and put his face in his plate. He looked ready to take a bite out of it.

Professor McGonagall glanced in his direction and gave a small smile. "I understand that you must all be hungry, so I will keep this short."

"Hooray," James said wearily, raising his fist in the air, his head still on his plate.

The people around us laughed and Professor McGonagall's smile widened slightly before she continued. "I'd like to remind the old students and let the new students know that the Forbidden Forest is off limits to all."

I glanced at James across the table. He just smirked. Finn and Cameron were rolling their eyes at Professor McGonagall's statement.

"Also, Mr. Filch would like me to say that all Weasley products are not to be used during classes or in the hallways."

I smiled. Professor McGonagall and most of the other teachers were more lenient about my dad and Uncle George's products being used. My dad said that was because of the portable swamp, which Finn, Cameron and I had immediately gone to look for on our first night at school two years ago. A section of it was still roped off after all these years. The teachers had apparently loved it and thought it was very impressive magic.

Anyway, Filch was always the most annoyed with the prank items. I suppose it was because he was the one who was usually stuck cleaning up after a lot of the messier products. If it were up to him, all Weasley products would be banned completely, but it seemed like he and Professor McGonagall had reached a compromise. If people pulled pranks only in their common rooms, it wasn't Filch's job to clean those rooms. That job belonged to the house elves.

Professor McGonagall was finally done with her speech. As she sat down, the food appeared in the middle of the table. I had almost forgotten how much food was always served. I debated over what I should start with while James, Finn and Cameron seemed to just pick whatever was in front of them and put it on their plates.

"Okay, here's another thing we need to figure out for that list of things we want to know about Hogwarts," James said through a bite of potato. "How does the food just appear like that?"

"We already know," I said. James had been with Finn, Cameron and I when we had gone down to the kitchens during our first year. "There are four tables just like these right under us and there has to be some kind of magic that-,"

"Well, what kind of magic?" James asked. "I want to know exactly how it works. We can go tonight and figure it out, and then you can write it down in the book."

"Yeah," Finn agreed excitedly. "We can bring Aerilyn too! She'd love that. Plus, it's practically an unwritten law that all members of the Weasley family know where the kitchens are."

James cleared his throat and Finn blushed. Cameron smirked and added, "The Potter family too."

"That's better," James said. "How about we go right after dinner?"

"We can't," I said, calmly spooning peas onto my plate.

"Come on, Lissie," Finn whined.

"I didn't say we couldn't go at all," I said. "I just said we can't go after dinner. I think you may have forgotten we need to go to the common room with the prefects and all the others so that we can find out the password. I don't think you want to be locked out of Gryffindor tower all night."

"Oh, you're right," Finn said, his ears turning red.

"You always think things through, Lissie," James said, smiling.

I smiled and shook my head.

After dinner, we followed Victoire and the other Gryffindor prefects up to the portrait of the fat lady. "Niffler," one of the prefects said. The portrait swung open.

Most of the older students went off on their merry way once we got inside, but Finn, James, Cameron, Shannon, Matt and I hung around, waiting for the prefects to finish explaining where the dorms were to the first years. When they were done, we would snag Aerilyn and bring her down to the kitchens. I suddenly decided to run upstairs and grab my camera while we were waiting.

"The girl's dormitory is up the stairs to the left, the boy's are upstairs to the right," Victoire was saying when I returned from the dorm with my camera. "Your things have already been brought up for you."

As the first years headed for the stairs, I grabbed Aerilyn's arm. Raina, Rose, and Albus stopped and looked at me as well. I bit my lip. Now they were going to want to come too. I suppose I couldn't stop them. They were family after all. We'd just have to be careful.

I made sure the prefects weren't paying any attention to us before I spoke. "Come with us," I said, jerking my head towards Shannon, Matt, Finn, Cameron and James who were now waiting by the portrait hole.

"Come with you where?" Rose asked. "Aren't we supposed to stay in our dormitories?"

"We still have ten more minutes until we're supposed to be back so if we leave now, nobody will care," I said. "It'll be coming back where we need to be careful."

"Where are we going? You never answered the question. Is it somewhere dangerous?" Albus asked.

"No," I said, "but if you don't want to come, you don't have to. Nobody's forcing you."

"Tell us where we're going, Lissie," Aerilyn said. "Then we can decide if we think it's dangerous."

"I would never put you in danger," I told her. "We're only going down to the kitchens."

"The kitchens? Is that allowed?" Rose's eyes widened. She looked nervous, but slightly fascinated.

"Sure it is," I nodded as a grin spread over my face. "Our parents have all been down there before."

"That doesn't make it allowed," Albus said with a laugh. "Our parents did a lot of things that weren't allowed."

"You have a point, Al," I sighed. "Are you all coming or not?"

"I want to," Aerilyn said at once.

"So do I," Raina added.

Rose was biting her lip. She was more like Aunt Hermione and hesitated a lot before doing things. "I suppose I'll come with you, but I really hope Filch doesn't catch us. I saw him at dinner and he scares me."

"Al?" I asked.

He paused and then nodded. "Yeah, why not?"

"Excellent." We met up with Finn, James, Shannon, Matt and Cameron and tiptoed out of the common room.

"This way," Finn said, leading the way down the hall. Cameron put a finger to his lips, signaling to be quiet.

Aerilyn, Raina, Rose and Albus were all giggling quietly behind their hands and I smiled. I knew how they were feeling. They were having a mini adventure on their first night at Hogwarts. It was exciting and even I felt full of adrenaline even though this was a trip I'd made quite a few times in the past two years. My heart beat even faster when I thought of the other bigger adventures we had planned for the upcoming months. It was sure to be one interesting school year.


	4. Chapter 4

The ten of us reached the basement without being spotted by anyone. It was actually hard to do. We had to keep the younger kids quiet because they kept giggling out of nervousness and excitement.

"Who wants to do the honors?" Finn asked.

"I'll do it," I volunteered. I stepped forward and stood on my tiptoes so I could reach the pear in the portrait of the bowl of fruit. I tickled the pear and it laughed. I heard my younger cousins gasp from behind me. Aerilyn giggled. The portrait swung open and I climbed through first.

"Welcome to the kitchens," James said happily.

Aerilyn, Rose, Raina and Albus stared around, their eyes wide.

"Hello!" squeaked a house elf, hurrying towards us. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, we came for a visit," I began, but James hurriedly cut me off.

"We have a question, actually."

"Of course, Mr. James," the house elf said.

"They _know_ you down here?" Aerilyn whispered.

I nodded. "This is my little sister, Aerilyn and those are my cousins, Raina, Rose and Albus." I introduced everyone to the house elf. I'm pretty sure her name was Winky. Apparently she had been a mess when she first came here to work, but she seemed okay now.

"Winky the house elf," she said, bowing. I guess I was right about her name. "Winky hopes she will be able to answer any question you may have." She smiled.

James walked over to the tables that were identical to the ones upstairs in the great hall. "How does the food miraculously appear on the tables upstairs?"

"It is very ancient and secret house elf magic," Winky squeaked. "Winky is not sure she can answer that." She was twisting her hands together nervously.

"House elf magic is different from human magic," Cameron said. "Isn't that right? So I don't think we could use it for ourselves even if we wanted to."

"Which we don't," I said. "We just want to know."

Winky took a deep breath and joined Finn over next to the tables. "Winky may get in trouble for telling."

"We won't say anything to anyone," James said. "We swear."

Winky nodded and her large ears flapped. "Years and years ago when Hogwarts was first opened, the founders had the house elves put a molecule splitting veil right below the ceiling." She pointed upwards.

"I don't see anything," James said.

"That is because you can't see it," Winky said, "all we do is put a levitation charm on the food and when we get the signal from Headmistress McGonagall-,"

"Which is what?" Finn asked. "How does she signal you if she's upstairs?"

"There is a button on the floor under the headmaster or headmistress's chair. They simply tap it with their foot and a bell chimes down here in the kitchens. We perform the levitation spell on the food and send it up."

"And then what happens when it reaches the molecule veil?" Albus asked.

"The molecules of the food are split apart, which actually makes it invisible and able to travel through the kitchen ceiling, which is also the great hall floor. It travels through the upstairs tables and once they reach the tabletops, the molecule veil ends, and the food appears. Or shall I say, reappears."

"Weird," Shannon and Matt whispered.

"Wonderful," James said.

"Wicked," Finn, Cameron and I said together.

"Wait," Rose said suddenly. "If the molecule veil only stops just under the upstairs tables, how come the molecules in everyone's legs and feet don't split apart? And what about the table legs and the floor?"

"Yeah," Raina said, her eyes widening. "That's a good question."

"It is a very difficult type of magic, even for house elves, but the house elves all those years ago were able to make it so that the veil only works on the food."

"Interesting," James said. "So if you levitated me up there, I wouldn't end up in the great hall?"

"I'm sorry to say that you wouldn't," Winky answered. James looked disappointed.

"That would be great if it worked on people," Finn laughed. "We could just appear on the tables during dinner and scare everyone!"

"That is not a safe idea, Mr. Finn, even if it worked," Winky said, shaking her head violently. Her ears flapped, hitting her in the head. "You might get into serious trouble."

"Yeah, Finn," Rose said, putting her hands on her hips.

"You look freakily like your mother," Cameron pointed out.

"Aunt Hermione combined with Grandma Weasley actually," I said. "It's scary."

"Well, that's all we wanted to know," James said. "Thanks Winky."

"It was no trouble, Mr. James." Winky bowed again, her long nose almost brushing the floor. Then, she insisted we each take some leftover food with us. It didn't take the boys much convincing.

Just as we reached the door, Aerilyn spoke up. "Wait, who's that picture of?" She was pointing to a picture hanging just beside the door. It was of a house elf with huge green eyes wearing mismatched socks, a sweater, and a huge smile.

I leaned closer as I noticed something. He wasn't wearing just any sweater. It was a Weasley sweater. A maroon one to be exact.

"He's wearing a Weasley sweater," Finn said, pointing out what I had been thinking. He leaned closer. "It has an R on it and it's maroon. It must be uncle Ron's."

I smiled. Even to this day, Grandma Weasley knitted sweaters for the entire family and she always gave Uncle Ron maroon ones. I also guessed that she was glad that she could use magic to knit them. Otherwise, she'd be working all year to complete over 30 sweaters and her fingers would have fallen off a long time ago.

"That is Dobby," Winky said, her voice growing sad. She pointed to a plaque under the picture.

"'Dobby the free elf will be forever missed,'" Cameron read.

"That's Dobby?" Finn asked excitedly. He looked down at Winky. "Our parents told us all about him! I named my owl after him!"

"He's not just _your_ owl," Cameron and I said together.

"Fine, _we _named _our_ owl after him." Finn gestured to himself, me and Cameron.

"You did?" Winky said, her eyes filling with tears and her voice a whisper. "Dobby was a very loyal house elf. He worked very hard even though he had been freed."

"May I take a picture?" I asked, holding up my camera.

"Yes," Winky said, looking slightly surprised. I snapped a picture of the plaque and the photo of Dobby. Then, I snapped one of the four tables. Both of them would go in our book.

"A molecule veil," James said with a smile as we walked back to Gryffindor tower. "I didn't know those existed.

"For house elves they do," I shrugged. "Like Cameron said earlier, they have different magic than we do."

"Still, it would be great if it worked on people."

"It basically makes you invisible, like your dad's cloak," Cameron told him.

"But he hasn't passed that down to me yet," James said irritably. "And the cloak doesn't split your molecules. You're still solid."

"Be grateful you have a cloak like that in your family," Matt mumbled. "I wish my dad had one of those."

"Your dad owns a joke shop, though," James said. "That's really cool too."

"Yeah, it is," Shannon agreed. "I love the toilet seat over the fireplace upstairs in the flat."

"My dad was talking about how he wishes he could bring it to our house and hang it there," I said. "He wants to hang it over our fireplace, but he's not sure if mum will let him. He says that nobody really sees it in the flat since they don't live there anymore, but he'd only take it if they had two so that Uncle George could have one too."

"Why don't we send them another one?" Raina asked.

"What?" I asked at the same time as Shannon, Matt, Finn, Cameron and James.

"We could send them another toilet seat. Then they'd have two and Uncle Fred can take the one in the flat home since Aunt Auden sent him that one. Dad can keep the one we send and everyone's happy."

"Raina," Shannon said. "You are a genius."

"I think we can now admit you're family," Matt added. Raina blushed and tried to punch Matt in the arm, but he caught her fist with a smirk.

"Tomorrow," James said with a grin. "Just before dinner. We'll meet in the common room. Lissie, bring your camera. We'll document this."

"We can use Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. It's always empty," I said.

All ten of us high fived at once. This was going to be brilliant.

Once up in my dorm, I took out the book we were making. On the inside front cover, I added a number two to our list. _There is a molecule veil that covers the area under the tables in the great hall and when the house elves use a levitation charm, the food floats through the veil, becomes invisible, and then reappears on the upstairs tables. That's how the food magically appears._

The first official page already had our list of adventures on it, so I flipped to the next page and wrote _September—Fluffy's trapdoor_ at the top. I flipped the page and looked at the reverse side. I decided it would be best to use the front and back of one sheet of paper for each adventure. One side could be covered with pictures and the other could be where we documented what happened.

At the top of the next page I wrote _October—Chamber of Secrets._ I continued writing down each month and the corresponding adventure at the top of pages. By the time I was done, I realized I had been right in thinking that we'd have pages left over. I had only used up about half of the pages in the book. The second half could be our own little scrapbook. The picture of the Dobby memorial in the kitchens, and the four downstairs tables could go back there as well as the pictures from the train and Operation Toilet Seat. It would be all the miscellaneous photos that weren't taken during any of our adventures.

I was letting the pictures I had taken that day soak in the magical potion I had set up by my bed. They included the picture of Hogwarts that I was going to stick to the book cover. By the morning they would be finished and I could put them in the book.

As I turned out the light next to my bed, I smiled. I couldn't wait for this book to be finished. I wondered what my parents and aunts and uncles would say when we showed it to them.


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay, so the Ton Tongue Toffee is going to Mrs. Norris and the Puking Pastil and Nosebleed Nougat are both going to Filch," Finn whispered.

My two brothers and I were standing at the doorway of the great hall, peering around the corner.

This morning, Finn had decided to share with me and Cameron that he had snuck some Skiving Snackboxes into his trunk before we left for school.

"Excellent," Cameron said. "Now we don't have to wait for dad to send us some before we use them."

"Wait a minute," I said, leaving them in the common room so that I could run up to my dorm. I grabbed the Ton-Tongue Toffees and my camera and ran back downstairs. "I promised dad that I would test these on Mrs. Norris. He said that he and Uncle George haven't tested any of their products on animals yet."

"Great," Finn said enthusiastically. "That means Filch gets a Skiving Snackbox. Which one?" He held out his hand to reveal one of each kind of snackbox.

"All four," Cameron said at once as if it were an obvious answer.

"No, just the Nosebleed Nougat and the Puking Pastil," I said. "Save the other two for another time. This way we don't use all of these up before we get the ones from dad."

That had been earlier this morning before breakfast. Now it was lunchtime and we were about to execute our plan. After lunch, we'd be going to get the toilet seat to send to dad.

"What are you doing?" I spun around and saw Aerilyn standing behind me with some girl I didn't know.

"Did you make a friend?" I asked, smiling.

"Yes, this is Stacy, but you didn't answer my question."

"Hi Stacy," I said. "I'm Felicity, but you can call me Lissie. This is Finn and that's Cameron. We're Aerilyn's older brothers and sister."

"Unfortunately," Aerilyn sighed. Finn shot her a look and they both laughed.

"I've heard about you," Stacy said.

"Good," Cameron answered. "That's a good thing."

"You didn't answer my question." Aerilyn crossed her arms and waited.

I felt slightly annoyed. Aerilyn was really fun and usually went along with our pranks after we convinced her, but she had a tendency to act like our mother. We already had one of those. We didn't need another one, especially one that was two years younger than we were.

"What was the question again?" Cameron asked.

"What are you doing?" she asked again.

"Pulling a prank on Filch," Finn said. He showed her and Stacy the candies in his hand. "Mrs. Norris too."

"Oh," Aerilyn blinked. "Okay. He's scary and he tried to yell at me this morning because I was going to be late and I was running through the hallways."

"You aren't going to try to talk us out of this?" Finn asked.

"No," Aerilyn shook her head.

"You aren't?" Stacy looked awestruck that Aerilyn would even consider such a thing.

"No," Aerilyn said again. "It's Filch. I'd only try to talk you out of it if you were pulling a prank on Professor McGonagall or one of the other teachers."

"Wicked," Finn said. "Now how about you two go find a seat and enjoy the show."

"Come on, Stacy," Aerilyn said, grabbing her friend's arm. "We have to get good seats."

I laughed as I watched my little sister head towards the Gryffindor table. "Ready?" I asked.

Finn and Cameron nodded. "We have a few minutes before Filch will actually be here. He's always a little late to lunch because of his boring caretaking duties that involve more chasing people than actual work," Cameron said.

The three of us slid along the wall until we had a perfect, clear view of Filch's usual chair and Mrs. Norris's cat dish, which was lying on the floor by Filche's chair.

Finn opened his hand to reveal the candies again. "Cameron you first," he said.

Cameron cleared his throat and held up his wand. "Windgardium Leviosa." He carefully navigated the Puking Pastil towards Filch's glass, keeping it low to the ground until the last possible second to avoid it being seen.

Cameron then took the two remaining candies from Finn and held them while Finn levitated the Nosebleed Nougat into Filch's glass. We were using his glass because they would be less noticeable in there as opposed to lying on his plate.

Now it was my turn. I levitated the Ton Tongue Toffee right into Mrs. Norris's cat food. This was going to be brilliant.

"He's coming, let's go," Cameron hissed. We hurried back towards our table, passing Filch on the way. We had to keep our heads down to hide the smiles that were spreading over our faces. We managed to find seats next to Aerilyn and Stacy. Shannon and Matt were already sitting across from them. James was sitting with one of his friends further down the table.

"Aerilyn told us what you did," Matt said, his eyes shining mischievously. "Brilliant."

"We know," Finn, Cameron and I said together.

All of us watched as Filch finished his drink in practically one gulp and Mrs. Norris nibbled at her cat food.

The results were almost immediate. Filch had one hand over his nose and the other over his mouth, but it was doing nothing to stop the flows of blood and vomit. It was disgusting. Mrs. Norris was making strangled sounding meows as her tongue grew longer and longer. Soon, she was falling over from the weight of her growing tongue.

Everyone in the room was now staring at Filch and his cat. A lot of the students were laughing as well as a few of the teachers, but some just looked disgusted. Professor Slughorn had the misfortune of sitting next to Filch and almost toppled out of his chair trying to move away.

"Argus, why don't you and Mrs. Norris go to the hospital wing?" Professor McGonagall suggested from her seat. "At once, please, before you cause everyone else to lose their lunch as well."

Filch gestured to his mouth and nose and gave Professor McGonagall a look. I imagined it would be quite difficult to walk while you were constantly bleeding and vomiting and Mrs. Norris's tongue looked like it was about two feet already.

"Lissie, your camera!" Finn said. He took it from me and quickly snapped a picture before hiding his hand with the camera under the table so nobody would see. Not that anybody would have noticed anyway. Everyone was too preoccupied with Filch, who was now trying to make his way to the doors. He was dragging Mrs. Norris while still being very sick all over the place. I smiled as I remembered that it was his job to clean that up.

Hagrid ended up having to help Filch and Mrs. Norris. He didn't look too thrilled about it, but he grabbed Filch and held him straight out in front of him. Mrs. Norris was under Filch's arm, her tongue swinging almost to the floor.

I high fived my brothers and cousins as we laughed at the results of our prank. I glanced up at the staff table. Professor McGonagall was staring at us. So was Neville, well, Professor Longbottom and Professor Lupin, but they were both laughing. Professor McGonagall was giving us the look, but she did look slightly amused.

I blinked at her and smiled sweetly. Finn and Cameron waved happily as if they had no idea why she was staring.

After lunch, Professor McGonagall stopped us before we could leave. "I suppose what happened was your doing?"

"What makes you think that?" Finn asked. "You could be wrongly accusing us."

"I witnessed too many of your father and uncle's pranks in my day. I know a prank culprit when I see one."

"You're not going to give us detention are you?" Cameron asked. "I mean, it was just Filch."

"Well, 'just Filch' happens to be a staff member at this school, whether you like it or not." Professor McGonagall looked down her nose at us. "However, this time I will not give you detention. Believe it or not, I've had many moments where I've wanted to step on that cat's tail. This was a much better idea." She gave us a smile and walked away.

"Yes," I cheered. "No detention."

"You were lucky to get out of that," Aerilyn said, appearing behind us.

"Lucky McGonagall has a sense of humor, even though it may be hidden somewhere," Finn said.

James appeared at my elbow, looking excited. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to prank Filch? I would have helped!" He didn't wait for an answer. "No matter, we're still going to get the toilet seat, aren't we?"

I nodded. "Let's go. We have just enough time to get it and send it before our next class."

We gathered Raina, Rose and Albus and we all headed to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

"Who's Moaning Mytle?" Rose asked.

"You don't want to know," Matt said, wrinkling his nose.

"She's only the most unpleasant ghost I've had the misfortune of meeting," Shannon added. "With any luck, we won't run into her."

We got lucky and didn't find Myrtle in the bathroom. She was probably zooming through the pipes, crying and thinking about death or something equally as morbid.

"Hey, look at this," Albus said, pushing open one of the stall doors. We all crowded behind him and peered over his shoulder.

"There's no toilet seat," Raina whispered.

I smiled. "Mum," I whispered. "Mum did that. This is the toilet she took the seat from."

Finn handed me my camera. He had still been holding it after the Filch prank. I took a picture and slid the camera strap around my neck, freeing my hands so that I could help detach our toilet seat.

We chose the stall next to the one mum had chosen. After we had detached the seat, Finn and Cameron reached to pick it up.

"Wait," Aerilyn said, holding her hand up. "Are you really going to touch a toilet seat that bare bums have sat on?"

"Bare bums?" Shannon giggled.

"You could have just said butts," Matt said.

"She was being specific," I said. "I mean, butts touch chairs too but hopefully on those occasions, the person has clothes on. Toilets aren't so lucky. They have the worst job in the world."

"Yeah, I mean, Violet Vanson could have used that toilet."

"Ew, gross, you might have a point," Finn said, stepping back.

According to my parents, Violet Vanson was the daughter of Pansy Parkinson and from what we had heard about Pansy, Violet seemed every bit as rude and annoying.

We made sure the seat was cleaned well before quickly transporting it to the owlery. Finn and James carried the seat while the rest of us formed a sort of bodyguard around them. When we got to the owlery, Aerilyn was put in charge of writing a note to mum and dad since she had promised to write them anyway. Finn and Cameron told her to remind dad about those Skiving Snackboxes. She did, and she also suggested that they keep the toilet seat in the flat and pass this one on to Uncle George. I suppose we could have sent this one right to Uncle George, but I wanted my mum and dad to see it. Mum had been the first one to actually send out a Hogwarts toilet seat after all.

"Well, we did it," James said, dusting off his hands, "and I've also been meaning to ask. We never picked a date for-."

I cleared my throat loudly. I didn't want him to mention anything in front of the younger cousins or else they would want to come and we couldn't have that. We were responsible for them and if they got hurt, it would be on our shoulders.

"We never picked a date for our next prank," James covered.

"What's your next prank?" Raina asked excitedly. "Can I help?"

"We aren't sure yet, we still have to plan it, but maybe you can help if it isn't too risky," Finn said.

"We'd better go," I added quickly. "We're going to be late if we don't hurry."

That night, I was sitting on the couch in the common room, updating our scrapbook. I had stuck the picture of Hogwarts to the cover and I had also added the pictures we had taken on the train and the ones from the kitchens to the back of the book. Now I was just waiting for the pictures from today's events to develop.

I smiled as I looked through what we had so far. In the picture of the four tables down in the kitchen, I noticed part of Winky's head in the bottom corner of the picture. Her ear was flapping back and forth and the one eye that was showing was blinking.

I glanced into the tray of potion I had set up. The picture of Filch and Mrs. Norris was almost ready. I could just make out Filch gesturing wildly to his face while Mrs. Norris fell over with the weight of her tongue and tried with no success to get back up.

"How's it coming?" Matt asked as he and Shannon looked over my shoulder.

"Great," I said, handing him the book. He smiled as he looked through it.

"I wonder if your parents got the toilet seat yet," Shannon said.

"Most likely," I answered. "I want to know what they did with it, so I'm hoping they'll send a reply soon."

The reply came the next morning at breakfast. Dobby the owl dropped it right into my bowl of cereal. Luckily, I hadn't poured the milk in yet, but I had just been about to.

Finn scooped the letter up and ripped it open. Cameron and I looked over his shoulders to read it.

_Dear Finn, Cameron and Lissie,_

_ As I'm sure you're aware, a very interesting object was sent to our house yesterday afternoon. Now, normal parents would probably scold their children for sending home a toilet seat, but we realized that we aren't exactly in a place to do that, as it would practically make us hypocrites. Your mother was speechless when the owls carried the seat through the window. _

_ I sent the toilet seat over to Uncle George, who loved it. I think he's hanging it up as we speak. I went over to the flat and brought that toilet seat home. I hung it up above our fireplace. Your mum opposed at first, but I got her to give in. _

_ Aerilyn wrote in her letter about how you already pulled a prank on Filch and Mrs. Norris. I'm glad you gave Mrs. Norris the Ton Tongue Toffee so soon, actually. Uncle George and I really wanted to know how that turned out. Your mum was upset about that at first, but once I reminded her that it was Mrs. Norris and not just some innocent cat, she seemed to change her mind. _

_ You know, just because the three of you are big shot third years now doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to write your dear old parents letters anymore. We've already gotten one from Aerilyn, but it's only the second day of school, and plus, who's counting? Not me, but your mum might be. She worries about you and likes to hear from you. So do I for that matter, so be sure to write at least once a week or else I'll send you each blown up copies of pictures taken during your bath time as babies (yes, we have some). I'm sure that'll be a treat to open at breakfast._

_ Like I said, don't hesitate to write, and even though you were supposed to wait until next week, I've sent along some Skiving Snackboxes. Use them well and stay safe. _

_ Love, Dad_

"He probably would send us blown up bath time pictures," Finn mumbled, dropping the letter onto the table. I picked it up and folded it back the way it had been. It would look nice in our scrapbook, right next to the toilet seat picture.


	6. Chapter 6

"Can I come watch the Quidditch tryouts tomorrow?" Aerilyn asked one morning about a week after the Filch prank.

"If you want to," I told her with a shrug, eating my cereal and finishing up the last sentence of my Herbology essay. I usually wasn't one for last minute homework, but Finn, Cameron and I had been thinking of ways to prank Scorpius last night.

"James is trying out for Seeker," she said.

"I know," I told her.

"Do you think he'll make it?"

"I think so. If he's anything like Uncle Harry, then yes."

"I want to be a Chaser next year," Aerilyn said.

"Well, lucky for you, there's going to be an open position," I said, ruffling her hair.

"You misspelled 'tentacula'," Aerilyn said, pointing to my essay.

I let out a frustrated sigh and crossed the word out so that I could fix it. I hated having to cross things out on my homework.

Just then, the mail arrived and Dobby landed in front of me with the Daily Prophet. Unfortunately, he walked right across my essay, leaving dirty print marks all along the top.

"Dobby, what on earth did you walk in to make your feet so dirty?" I asked, shooing him off my paper.

"Oi, be nice to my owl," Finn said, taking the newspaper and patting Dobby's head.

"He's not _your_ owl," I said through gritted teeth as Aerilyn started laughing. "Oh be quiet," I told her, although I couldn't help but smile myself.

"Neville won't be too happy about that," Cameron said, cheerily. He was clearly enjoying my dilemma.

"That's Professor Longbottom to you," Finn corrected in a mock stern voice.

"I'll just tell him the truth. Luckily the footprints are only on the top of the page and not across any words. At least I have it done."

"I think it adds to the essay," Aerilyn said.

"Yeah," I said, holding up my paper. "The footprints make it brilliant and original if I do say so myself."

* * *

><p>"I want to do it," Finn hissed.<p>

"No, I want to," Cameron answered.

"No, I think I should. It was my idea," Finn argued.

"I'll do it," I interrupted impatiently. The three of us were sitting in Potions class, waiting for class to begin and deciding who should be the one to prank the Slytherins at the next table. Just as the bell rang, Shannon and Matt entered the room and sat down at our table.

"Why are you out of breath?" Finn asked.

"We were helping Raina pull a prank on Scorpius," Shannon said.

"How did it go?" I asked.

"Let's just say our little sister is an evil genius," Matt grinned, pulling out his books. "She was the one who thought of the prank."

"Which was what?" Finn asked.

"Levitating a water balloon into his bag so that when it pops-,"

"—his things will be soaked," I finished with a laugh.

"Yes, but the genius part is-," Matt began.

"—we didn't fill the water balloon with water," Shannon finished with an evil smile.

"What did you fill it with?" Finn asked eagerly.

"Well we might have broken the 'no-playing-with-your-food' rule to create it," Shannon smirked.

"Pumpkin juice, salt, pepper, tomato sauce, mustard, and milk," Matt announced proudly.

"Ugh," Cameron wrinkled his nose.

"Did you see it explode in his bag?" Finn asked.

"We did," Matt nodded. "Actually, we didn't want to risk not seeing it, so we _caused_ it to explode in his bag using our handy dandy wands." He twirled his in the air before placing it on the table.

"You didn't!" I giggled.

"We did," Shannon answered excitedly, her brown eyes wide and excited.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Natrually, it seeped all over Scorpius's things," Matt said. "There was a nasty stain on his bag, and of course it smelled terrible."

"What did Scorpius do?" Finn asked as Cameron and I continued to giggle.

"He said 'my father will hear about this'," Matt answered, in an almost exact imitation of Scorpius. This news caused all of us to burst out into fits of hysterical laughter.

"Now, now, it is time for class to begin," Professor Slughorn said, coming into the room. "Potion making is a very serious task."

"Of course," I whispered in a serious voice. Finn and Cameron snorted.

Professor Slughorn put us to work making our potions. Halfway through the class, I took the dung bomb from Finn's hand and casually made my way over to the storage cupboard, which was right next to the Slytherin table. I glanced over my shoulder. Every Slytherin at the table was looking through their books. I casually slipped the dung bomb into the nearest cauldron and speed walked back to my own seat.

I realized the cauldron belonged to Pansy Parkinson's oldest child, Ivy. That was definitely a bonus. We had just wanted to get it into any Slytherin cauldron, but of all people, it had landed in hers.

Within seconds, Ivy's cauldron began making a hissing sound. "What's going on?" she asked, panicked. "I did exactly as the directions said."

"Well, let's see now," Slughorn said, stepping over to her cauldron. I bit my lip. If he was still there when the dung bomb actually went off, he was going to stink as well, which was not the objective.

"Professor-," I began, but Finn clapped a hand over my mouth.

"You'll blow our cover," he hissed.

"I know just the thing," Professor Slughorn said, walking to his desk. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The hissing sound grew louder and finally there was a muffled, watery bang and a huge puff of greenish yellow smoke erupted from Ivy's cauldron and surrounded her table.

"Ew!" I heard her and her friends squealing.

The smoke cleared and the smell began to travel across the room. I pulled my collar over my mouth to block it. Everyone else was doing the same.

"Er, well, we didn't have much time left of class anyway, so I'll dismiss you now so that I can clean up. You four," he said, gesturing to Ivy and her friends, "might want to bathe in lemon juice for about an hour. That should get the smell out."

"Lemon juice!" Ivy shrieked as everyone began to gather their things and head for the door as quickly as possible. She turned to our table. "It was them! I know it! They're the good for nothing prankster freaks!"

"Now Ivy," Professor Slughorn scolded. "We don't want to make accusations that we don't have proof to support."

"I do have proof! Their kids of joke shop owners that sells prank items! They used something from the shop to prank me!"

"That may be so, but I'm sure that shop gets lots of customers. Anyone could have bought an item to prank you, but, uh, are you sure you followed the directions completely?"

"Yes!" Ivy shrieked.

"Well then, I'd suggest you go get cleaned up. I'll deliver the message to your professor for your next class."

Ivy stomped out of the room. Matt, Shannon, Finn, Cameron and I followed. Once out in the hallway, we high fived. That was the second time we had avoided a potential detention since school started. We were on a roll.

"I've always wondered how to get out of a detention," Matt said as we headed to dinner. "I guess that's how.

"By sheer dumb luck," I answered. "And pulling pranks on people that have it coming," I added, remembering the Filch and Mrs. Norris prank. I made a mental note to add that to the list of things we wanted to figure out about Hogwarts.

* * *

><p>"James, get that out of my face," Rose complained the next morning at breakfast.<p>

"I'm practicing," James answered, leaning forward and snatching the walnut out of the air. Cameron put down his wand and went back to his cereal. He had been levitating the walnut so that James could practice catching it.

"I'm sure you don't even need to practice," Raina said confidently. "Wasn't your dad the youngest seeker in a-,"

"—century, yes," James finished proudly, "but I still need to practice. I might not be as good as he is."

"I'm sure you will be," I said calmly. I was sure that James would be a good Quidditch player, but mostly I wanted him to shut up about it.

After breakfast, we headed down to the tryouts. Aerilyn sat in the stands with a few of her friends as well as our other younger cousins.

The only open spot on the team was the seeker, but our captain wanted the whole team there to help out. I noticed James kept shuffling around in line so that he was getting further and further away from the front.

"What are you doing?" I asked in a whisper, landing my broom next to him.

"I'm not ready to go just yet," he answered. "I want to check out the competitors."

"You're nervous," I stated.

"No, like I said, I want to see how the others do first," he argued.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Sure."

"Okay, maybe I'm a little nervous, but I have big shoes to fill. What's everyone going to think if I'm terrible at this? What's my dad going to think if I don't make the team?" His eyes went comically wide.

"He won't care," I shrugged. "Not making the Quidditch team isn't a big deal. It's not like your getting expelled or mauled by the giant squid or-,"

"Okay, okay," James squeaked.

"You'll be fine. Plus, haven't you been practicing like mad lately?"

"Yeah," James nodded.

"And sometimes sneaking out at night in order to do that." I gave him a knowing look.

"How did you know? You aren't mad, are you?"

"James, it's me you're talking to. That should answer both of your questions." I patted him on the shoulder.

"Weasley!" yelled the captain. "Not you," he added as Finn, Cameron, and Shannon looked up. Finn and Cameron were Beaters and Shannon was a Chaser, same as me. "Lissie, quit talking to the potential new teammates and go stand with the rest of the team. I need everyone paying attention."

"Yes sir," I said, saluting him. I gave James a smile and returned to the rest of the team.

James made it onto the team, but it was a very close tryout. A lot of the other students trying out were pretty good. Obviously, James was the best though, or else he wouldn't have made it onto the team.

He was in a very good mood for the rest of the day and he wouldn't stop talking about his tryout.

That night, we were in the common room, sitting in our usual spot by the fire and James was still talking about Quidditch. I love Quidditch as much as the next person, but it was starting to get a little irritating.

"James," I groaned, "this is about the fiftieth time we've heard the play by play of how you caught the Snitch every single time. Give it a rest already."

"But it's interesting," James argued.

"Not after you tell it that many times," Matt sighed.

"Fine," James pouted.

There was finally a peaceful silence and I was able to work on my letter to mum and dad. I really didn't want any photos of me in the bathtub to be sent over. That would be absolute torture.

"Let's do it next Saturday," James said suddenly.

"Come again?" asked Cameron.

"Let's go down the trapdoor next Saturday," James clarified.

"That's a week from now," Shannon said. "Don't we need time to plan?"

"Who needs planning?" Finn said, waving his hand dismissively. "We're going to just wing it. Next Saturday gives us plenty of time."

"No, it really doesn't," Shannon argued.

"Maybe Shannon has a point," I added. "I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff to get past besides Fluffy. There's the Devil's Snare, the flying keys, the chess set. I mean, this is beginning to sound unsafe."

"Lissie, are you a Weasley or not?" Finn asked.

"Of course I am, but that doesn't mean I have to-,"

"Mum did it," Finn interrupted.

"Because she had a real purpose for going down there," I sighed. "We're just doing it because we feel like it."

"Whether we have a purpose or not, it's still a risk," Cameron said rationally.

"Plus, our parents have told us how they did it," James said. "If they can do it, we certainly can. They were even younger than we were."

"Exactly," Cameron chimed in. "You can't back out, Lissie. We've already started planning it."

I took a deep breath. "Shannon, Matt? Are you in?"

"We're in," the said at once, nodding their heads.

"Okay, then so am I," I answered, "but we can't tell anyone else, especially-,"

"Especially who? Who can't you tell and what are you planning?" Aerilyn appeared at my elbow with Raina, Rose and Albus.

"You," I said, "we can't tell you."

"Can't tell us what?" Albus asked, looking slightly hurt.

"Are you planning another prank?" Rose asked.

"No, if they were, they'd tell us," Aerilyn said, crossing her arms, "unless it's something dangerous. Lissie, tell me."

"Why should I? I'm older than you."

"It's nothing to worry about," James assured her.

"Why do I get the feeling that it is?" Raina asked.

I looked at Finn and Cameron. I knew we were thinking the same thing. If we told them what we were doing, they might tell mum and dad and then we'd be in huge trouble. We couldn't risk that. On the other hand, however, they might tell mum and dad even if we didn't tell them. They could still tell them we were up to something suspicious.

"Maybe we should tell them," I said. "So, who wants to do the honors?"

"You should," James said. "I've talked too much today about my Quidditch tryout. I can't possibly talk anymore. I need to save my voice."

I threw a crumpled up paper at him. "Fine," I responded.

I briefly summarized what we were planning to do and how we were discussing going down the trapdoor next weekend.

"I was right! That is dangerous!" Aerilyn practically shouted.

"Will you be quiet?" I hissed. "You won't tell mum and dad, will you?"

"I won't tell," Aerilyn said.

"Thank you," I sighed. Then, I noticed the smirk on her face.

"I won't tell, as long as I can come with you."

"Us too!" Raina, Rose and Albus added excitedly.

I stared wide eyed at the others. We had a problem on our hands.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I hope everyone likes this chapter. Don't forget to leave a review and let me know what you think! **

**I don't own Harry Potter**

* * *

><p>"Either we go with you or you don't go at all unless you want to be in trouble with mum and dad. I don't think it's a hard decision, really," Aerilyn said.<p>

My little sister was an evil genius.

"Well, we were going to tell our parents anyway," Shannon said thoughtfully. "What does it matter if it's a little sooner?"

"Shannon, if our parents find out now, they'll be furious and try to stop us," James said. "If they find out after the fact, then they'll just be furious."

"Right," Shannon nodded. "I didn't think of that."

"Slacker," I said with a smile.

"Shut it," she answered, pointing a finger at me and laughing.

"Anyway, we wanted our book to be a surprise," Finn whined.

"Book? What book?" Rose asked.

"We're making a sort of scrapbook to document our adventures," Cameron said. "We've already started adding pictures from our pranks and from the train."

"Cool, can we see it?" Albus asked.

"It's not exactly finished yet," I said.

"Are we in it?" Aerilyn asked.

"Yes, in a few pictures," I nodded.

"I want to see," Rose demanded.

"Later," James said, standing up. "Right now we have to make a decision." Finn, Cameron, Shannon, Matt and I huddled around James while the younger cousins stood where they were, looking slightly upset about being left out of the decision.

"So, what are we going to do?" I asked. "We're responsible for them. If anything happens, it's going to be completely our fault."

"Let's just bring them with us," James shrugged. "The more the merrier, right?"

"James, do you even care about if your little brother and cousins get hurt?"

"Of course I do, but if our parents can do this stuff, then they can."

"Besides the trapdoor, our parents weren't eleven years old for all of it," Shannon pointed out.

"And besides the Chamber of Secrets and the whole werewolf, time traveling, Shrieking Shack part, they weren't thirteen and twelve for all of it either," James argued.

"I think we should let them in on it," Matt said. "I mean, we aren't actually doing a lot of the dangerous parts. We aren't fighting the basilisk or actually facing Voldemort. He's not even around anymore."

"I guess you're right," I sighed. "Okay, I guess they can come, but we have to be extremely careful. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the others said at once.

We turned back to Aerilyn, Albus, Raina and Rose. "Okay," Shannon said, "You can join us, but on one condition."

"I hate conditions," Raina said, rolling her eyes.

Shannon ignored her. "You have to do everything we say. The last thing we need is for anyone to get hurt so if we tell you to leave, you leave; if we tell you to stay where you are, you stay; if we tell you to move, you move. Got it?"

"Got it," Aerilyn said, seeming satisfied that she was allowed to come with us. "So, next Saturday then?"

"We haven't-," I began, but James interrupted.

"Next Saturday," he said with a grin.

I sat down again and crossed my arms. I still wasn't sure about letting them come with us. I wanted to go on an adventure, not babysit a bunch of younger kids. I sighed. They were probably looking for an adventure just as much as I was. They had always been in awe over our parents' adventures as well, so why should I stop them from getting in on it? We would just have to make sure they didn't get a single scratch or else our parents would kill us, bring us back to life, and punish us until we were eighty.

"Lissie, stop worrying," Finn said. "We can handle this. We've always taken care of our cousins."

"I know," I said. Finally, I looked up and grinned. "Let's get planning."

"Excellent," James said with a smile.

* * *

><p>A week later, I was sitting in the exact same chair by the fire with my camera in my hands and my feet tucked under me, waiting for just the right moment.<p>

Planning for what we were going to do tonight was surprisingly easy. Well, easier than I had expected anyway. There were a few snags. For example, we panicked when I realized that we had no musical instruments to play in order to put Fluffy to sleep. Then James, smirking, let us in on the fact that he had taken his dad's old flute from Hagrid with him, hoping we'd agree to his idea to experience our parents' adventures.

Now, I sat next to my brothers, just waiting. Shannon and Matt had gone straight to the third floor hallway after dinner with Raina and Rose. James had left the common room not too long ago with Aerilyn and Albus and in exactly two and a half minutes, Finn, Cameron and I would be scheduled to leave. We were meeting there in groups at regular ten minute intervals so that we would draw less attention to ourselves. People would get suspicious if ten kids left the common room at once so close to curfew. Especially since four of us have a reputation as mischief makers.

"It's time, let's go," Finn whispered, neatly folding the newspaper he was holding.

We had to be very quiet to avoid getting caught on our way to the third floor. Since we didn't have the Marauder's Map or the Invisibility Cloak yet, we were at a disadvantage. This was another reason why we went in small groups. We didn't want to attract attention in the hallways. James was still upset that Uncle Harry hadn't passed down the map or the cloak yet, but I pointed out that the cloak would be useless since all ten of us couldn't fit under it.

We finally made it to the third floor and found Aerilyn and the rest of our cousins squished behind a tapestry.

"Finally, you made it," Matt breathed, ushering everyone out into the hallway. "My whole arm fell asleep." He shook it out in front of my face.

"Did you run into anyone?" Aerilyn asked excitedly. It's as if she wanted us to run into someone.

"No, thank goodness," I said, shaking my head.

"We didn't either," Aerilyn answered, her shoulders slumping. "I kind of hoped we would. It would be exciting."

"Not if you got caught," I answered.

"I didn't say I wanted to get caught. I just thought hiding from a teacher would have been exciting," she replied.

"You have plenty of time to be running from teachers," I told her. "Now, let's go before we actually do get caught."

James, being the incredibly daring person he is, opened the door and stepped inside. We all followed him and stood grouped together just inside the doorway.

"I'm not sure we're going to need this." James held up the flute and looked disappointed.

I saw what he meant instantly. Fluffy was already asleep, without any music. The only way we knew he wasn't dead was because of the tornado winds of breathing coming from the three heads.

"I don't understand," Raina whispered. "There's no music playing. Why is he asleep?"

"Well," Rose began, "I'm not sure of the lifespan of giant three headed dogs, but if it's the same as most normal dogs, then Fluffy here is quite old. I expect he sleeps a lot now."

"That makes sense," Cameron said, nodding.

Fluffy let out another breath and I squeezed my eyes shut as my hair flew around my face.

"It's got horrible breath," Albus pointed out.

"I noticed," Finn said, holding his nose.

"Just our luck," Shannon said, pointing to the trapdoor. Fluffy's paw was covering it. "I'm sure he'll wake up if we try to move it and old or not, he's still got three heads, which gives him a better chance of eating one of us."

"Basically, he's still dangerous," I said.

"Exactly," Shannon answered. "Just not as with it as he used to be."

"James, get the flute ready," Cameron said. "The rest of us will start to push the paw out of the way. If Fluffy even starts to wake up, James, start playing. Got it?""

"Got it," we all answered.

"Wait, who's going to jump first?" I asked. "Any volunteers?"

Everyone was silent.

"Let's not get too excited, now," I said under my breath. "I'll just go first, then."

"Great, it was nice knowing you sis," Finn said.

"Finn, we know what's down there and how to get past it. I'll be fine."

"I know," he answered, as if I had missed something obvious. "If we didn't know what was down there, do you think I would have let you go first? I would have sent Cam down there instead."

"Hey!" Cameron hissed.

"Alright, alright, can we get back on track, please!" Matt said, stepping between us. "Let's go."

Everyone except James grouped around Fluffy's gigantic paw. Struck by an idea, I snapped a picture of it before placing my hands on a free spot of fur.

With nine of us pushing, we managed to move Fluffy's paw pretty easily. James stood a few feet away with the flute held up to his mouth, his eyes flickering between each of the three heads.

The rest of us slowly backed towards the trapdoor. Fluffy made a snorting noise, but stayed asleep.

"Alright," I said, opening the trapdoor. "Here I go." I took a deep breath and jumped. It felt like I was falling forever until I finally hit the bottom. It was dark, but I could feel the Devil's Snare instantly start twisting around my ankles and wrists.

Seconds later, Finn and Cameron landed beside me, looking completely thrilled. Shannon and Matt came along just after, followed by Raina, Rose, and Albus.

There was a longer stretch of time after Albus had jumped than there had been between any of us so far.

"It's just Aerilyn and James left so far," I said. "What's taking so long?"

Suddenly, we heard barking. It sounded like Fluffy had woken up.

"Aerilyn!" I screamed. "Jump! James, start playing and then you jump too!"

"I can't!" Aerilyn's scared voice yelled from far above us.

"Why?" I screamed back, starting to panic.

Either Aerilyn didn't answer, or she was drowned out by Fluffy's barks. I could hear the flute playing faintly, but Fluffy's barks continued.

I tried to stand up, but the Devil's Snare had already twisted around my arms, legs and waist. Finn was doing the same.

"Stop, Lissie," Cameron demanded. "Don't you remember what happens when you struggle against this stuff?"

"I don't care. Our little sister is up there and she's in trouble."

"I know," Cameron answered. His voice cracked as he tried to hold back tears. He was panicking too, but he wasn't struggling against the Devil's Snare. He was the only one, for that matter.

"Why isn't Fluffy falling asleep?" I asked, my voice angry and frustrated. "I can hear James playing."

"I think I might know why," Rose answered. "James, play louder! Play as loud as you can!"

I heard the flute music grow louder, but Fluffy was still barking. I needed to know what was happening and if Aerilyn was okay.

"Louder!" Rose screamed.

The flute music became even louder and finally, Fluffy's barks slowed and came to an eventual stop. There was a large thump.

"That must have been him falling over when he fell asleep," Shannon said. We were all breathing heavily and staring up at the speck of light that was the open trapdoor.

Seconds later, James and Aerilyn both landed on top of the Devil's Snare with a thump. They were both shaking and James was out of breath from playing the music.

"Aerilyn, what happened?" I asked.

"Fluffy woke up," she said. Her voice was shaky and she looked close to tears. "He went after me and I backed into the corner and hid under his tipped over dog dish. That thing is massive. Anyway, he kept trying to get me out from under there. James was playing like mad, but nothing happened for a while."

"He fell asleep after Rose told me to play louder, though," James said.

"I figured that the problem might be that since Fluffy is old, he probably can't hear very well," Rose shrugged. "He just didn't hear the music playing."

"Good thinking, Rose," I said. "It's incredible how you always manage to think straight in stressful situations."

"I take after my mother," she answered.

The Devil's Snare was trying to work its way around my neck now, but now that I knew my sister and my cousin were alright, I could relax a little bit. I closed my eyes and held my breath and soon I could feel the plant loosen up and let go. When I opened my eyes, the tentacles were retracting from the others as well.

"I see the door," Cameron said, pointing across the room.

"Hold on," I said. "Lumos." The tip of my wand lit up and the plant we were on shrunk away from the light. "Just in case," I added.

"Good idea," Finn said, nodding and rubbing his wrist. There was a red mark going around it.

"What happened?" I picked his wrist up to examine it.

"That plant is strong and not exactly soft," he answered. "It'll go away. Look, you have one too."

He was right. Both of my wrists were marked with faint red marks.

"Let's just get out of here," Raina whined.

"Yes, let's," I answered. I caught up with Aerilyn and James as we headed for the door. "Are you sure you two are okay?" I grabbed them both in a hug.

"We're fine," James answered. "Aerilyn's really brave." He smiled down at her and she grinned.

"Not as brave as you. I'm surprised you managed to keep playing that thing the whole time." She looked at him over Finn and Cameron's shoulders as they hugged her as well.

"Trust me," he said. "It was hard to do. I had practically no saliva."

Aerilyn giggled; a sound that grew louder as Finn and Cameron picked her up to carry her between them.

"Well, James," I said, as we opened the door and entered the next room. "I expect this room is the one you've been looking forward to."

We all stared up at the many flying keys circulating the room. "Which one is it?" James asked.

"Easy," Matt said. "It's that one. The wings are crushed and it can barely fly. It's the slowest out of all of them."

There was a pile of brooms in the corner. Finn, Cameron, James, and I each took one. The others waited by the door, prepared to take the key and unlock the door as quickly as possible. I handed Shannon my camera and told her to take a picture when we got into the air.

"Ready?" I asked, looking sideways at my brothers and my cousin as we mounted our brooms.

"Ready," they answered.

"Let's do this," James said with a grin. He was truly excited to be doing this. Flying was his thing. It always had been and it probably always would be.

They had come up with a strategy to block the key from all angles so that it couldn't get away and it turned out that their strategy was a good one because it worked pretty well. It also helped that the key wasn't as fast as it once was, having been slowed down by its bent and crushed wings.

Within seconds, the key was caught by James, who passed it to Raina, who jammed it into the lock and turned. The door opened with a creak and we all stepped inside the next room.

This room was dark, but I knew what it was. It was the life size chess board, and for me, the scariest obstacle of all. This was where Uncle Ron had sacrificed himself to save Uncle Harry, Aunt Hermione and my mum.

"I don't like this room," Aerilyn whispered.

"There aren't any lights. You can't see anything. How do you know?" James asked.

"Just because of what happened in here."

At least someone was on the same page as I was.

"I agree," Rose whispered.

"Just think, Rose," I said, trying to make her feel better. "Your dad's famous for playing in this chess game and now maybe you could be too." Rose was by far the best chess player out of all of us.

As we took a few more steps forward, the lights flickered on and we all gasped.

"The pieces are still broken," Albus said, sounding disappointed. "I wanted to play."

"Well, it doesn't look like we can," Cameron answered sadly, looking around at the chess pieces, half of which were still indeed broken, like Albus had pointed out.

I was disappointed as well. As creeped out as I was by the giant chess pieces, I had wanted to play.

As a group, we headed for the door, but we were stopped by one of the still intact pieces. A queen to be specific. She slid in front of the door, blocking us from getting to it.

"We can't get out," Rose whispered. "We have to play. It's the only way out."

"But we can't!" James said, kicking a piece of debris in frustration.

"What are we going to do?" Shannon asked.

"Go back," Raina answered. "We tried and now we can't go forward anymore."

"There has to be a way." Rose bit her lip. The gears in her head were turning. I could almost hear them.

"Well, when you think of something, let us know," James said impatiently. "Because I don't want to give up. Our only option is to go forward."

"James, if we can't go forward, we can't just sit here forever. We'll have to go back," Cameron said.

"Rose said there has to be a way," James countered as we watched Rose start to pace.

"She's eleven," Cameron argued.

"She's also Aunt Hermione's daughter. If anyone can figure out a way, she can. Just give her a minute," Matt said.

"So we have to trust an eleven year old girl?" James asked with an amused smile.

"Yes, pretty much," Matt answered.  
>I looked at the queen piece blocking the door. "I wonder if that's the queen that-,"<p>

"—don't say it," Rose squeaked.

"Hey, keep thinking over there," James ordered. Rose went back to pacing.

"It very well might be, to answer your question," Cameron whispered to me.

I shuddered and my eyes found part of a knight piece lying at my feet. I picked it up and shared a look with Finn and Cameron.

"I've got it," Rose said suddenly. "It's so simple. I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out."

"It's okay, you're young. You're just learning magic," I assured her.

"Well, I had practiced a few spells before I came to school so I wouldn't be entirely new to performing them," Rose shrugged.

"Of course," I said, letting out a breath. I hadn't bothered to learn any new spells before I came to Hogwarts. Nobody else had either, for all I knew.

"Can you just tell us your idea?" James asked.

"Okay, well here it is," Rose said as we all gathered around. Truthfully, I couldn't wait to hear what she had in mind.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I'm trying to keep the story similar but differenet from the actual books and if anyone has anything they'd like me to add, then feel free to let me know :)**

* * *

><p>"The pieces are broken," Rose said, her eyes shining excitedly.<p>

"Yes, thank you for stating the obvious," James said, gesturing with his hand for her to hurry up and get to the point.

Rose shot him a look but then continued speaking. "So why don't we just put them back together?"

"Put them back…?" I began, not quite understanding how she expected us to do that. Then, she pulled out her wand and held it in front of us. Oh. She had been right; the answer was pretty simple.

"One simple word," she said with a smile.

"Brilliant, Rose," Albus whispered.

"You know," I said, throwing an arm around my little cousin's shoulders, "maybe bringing you along wasn't such a bad idea."

"What about us?" Aerilyn asked, gesturing to herself, Raina and Albus.

"You aren't so bad either," I shrugged, grinning.

"Alright, if we all help, we should have the pieces repaired in no time," Matt said, running his hand along a large, cracked chess piece in front of him. He pointed his wand at the crack. "Reparo." The crack instantly repaired itself.

"It worked," Raina said, clapping her hands.

"Of course it worked," Shannon said impatiently, but I could tell she was just as excited.

Matt was right. With all ten of us working to repair the chess pieces, they were fully restored once again in no time at all.

Once we were finished, all ten of us chose our spots on the chess board and waited for one of the white pieces to move. When one finally did, we all looked at each other.

"I think it would be best for me to move their, wouldn't it?" Albus asked, glancing at Rose.

She chewed her lip as she thought. "Actually, no I think it would be better if you moved there." She pointed to a spot diagonally to Albus's right.

I honestly don't know what we would have done without Rose. The rest of us were pretty decent at chess, but like I said before, she's better. She directed our pieces around the board and told us where to go if we were unsure or if our original idea could be replaced by a better one. Usually, I would have been slightly upset that my eleven year old cousin was telling me what to do and how to play chess, but this time, I didn't mind. I just wanted for us to get out unharmed.

"Um," Rose said, her voice quiet and squeaky, after a white piece had moved. She laughed nervously. "This is kind of a déjà vu moment," she said.

"What is, Rose?" I asked in a hesitant tone.

"Well," she took a deep breath. "The only way to win now would be if-,"

"You don't have to sacrifice yourself, do you?" James asked.

"Yeah, it's not worth it," Cameron added. "We can just go back and forget about this."

"It's not me," Rose whispered. She looked on the verge of tears. "It's Albus."

"What?" I squeaked.

"No," James said. "No way, absolutely not. This isn't worth risking my little brother for. We're going back." He turned to move back towards the way we had come.

"No," Albus said. His voice was oddly strong considering the situation. "I'll do it."

"Albus, have you completely lost it?" Finn asked. "You can't! James is right; it's not worth it."

"Uncle Ron-," Albus began.

"—Didn't really have a choice," Matt finished urgently. "We have a choice. We can quit. We can go back."

"Ultimately we don't have a choice either, but for us, our only option is to go back. We're not putting you in danger, Albus," I added.

"I'll do it," he said. I could tell his mind was already made up, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to try and change his mind.

"No, you won't," I argued. My argument was backed up by everyone else nodding in agreement.

"I think it's settled, then," Cameron said. "We're going back."

Before anyone could do anything, Albus had darted two spaces to the left.

"No!" everyone yelled.

"Albus, I'm going to strangle you!" James yelled furiously.

"What do we do?" I asked as one of the white queens moved towards Albus.

"We run. Grab him and run," Matt said.

"We're still technically playing, though. We can't move onto random spaces," Shannon argued.

"Who cares?" James yelled. "We won't be on random spaces for long. Ten of us will be running off of the board. Nothing will happen to us. We'll be out of the game."

"Well we're going to need to hurry!" Raina said, pointing. The queen was drawing nearer and nearer to Albus, who was looking directly at it, his lip trembling with fear, but his eyes determined.

"On the count of three, we'll run, grab Albus, and leave," James said, getting prepared to make a run for it.

"No!" Albus said finally. "I want to do this."

"You want to get hit over the head by a piece of stone?" Rose shrieked.

"No, I want to go through with this. Even if I'm not conscious, I want you guys to finish what we started."

"You're mental; we're coming to get you!" I yelled.

"It's too late," Albus whispered. He was right. The queen had reached him and with surprising speed, she cracked her stone arm over Albus's head. He fell to the floor, unconscious.

"Albus!" James yelled. He covered his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I'm such a terrible brother. I wasted time listening to him when I should have just run over and grabbed him. Why did we even hesitate?"

"There's no time to be feeling guilty," Matt said, failing to hide his shaking voice. "James, you have to finish the game." He nodded towards the king piece standing on the opposite end of the board.

"You know, this _is_ mental," James said, removing his hands from his eyes. "This was the dumbest idea I've ever had."

"No, it's not. It actually was a pretty good idea, but…" I trailed off and looked at Albus lying on the floor.

"It's too dangerous," James finished quietly.

"What do we do now, then?" Rose asked.

"We keep going." Everyone looked at Aerilyn, who looked terrified, but sure of herself. "We keep going," she repeated, taking a breath. "Albus did this so we could go on. If we go back, won't what he did be wasted?"

"All that's left is the final room where Uncle Harry got the stone out of the mirror," Rose said. "There's nothing to do in there and Albus won't know the difference. He won't know if we went back or kept going."

"He will from the pictures. The Mirror of Erised is still in there and if we don't go in and take a picture, Albus will know," Matt said.

"We don't have to show him any of the pictures." I looked down at the camera hanging from the strap around my neck.

Matt snorted. "We're making a scrapbook and Albus will know about it. Plus, once he wakes up, the first thing he'll ask to see is the pictures from what happened after he was knocked out so that he can be caught up on what happened."

I sighed. Matt did have somewhat of a point.

"Well, then should we go on?" Finn asked, looking around at all of us.

"Let's do it," I said. "Like Rose said, there's one room left and there's nothing in it besides the mirror. Nobody can possibly get hurt in there."

"Alright," James said slowly. He turned and walked towards the king piece. "Checkmate."

The game was finally over. We all ran to Albus's side and James flipped him over so that he was lying on his back.

"My dad will kill me if he ever finds out," he mumbled.

"Do we still want to show our parents the scrapbook when we finish it?" I asked.

"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," Cameron answered.

James picked Albus up and the rest of us helped arrange him in a piggyback position on James's back. When we were ready, we headed for the door.

"Wait, Lissie, don't forget to take a picture," Aerilyn reminded me.

I looked at her. This didn't seem like something we were doing for fun anymore. It felt too serious.

"If we're going to do this," she said, "we should do it right. We should do it the way we planned it."

I nodded and picked up my camera, snapping a picture of the chessboard, now littered once again with dust and broken chess pieces.

"Come on, let's go," Shannon said, turning and opening the last door.

The room was large and empty except for one thing: the Mirror of Erised. I held up my camera and snapped a picture. "There, we're done. Can we go now?" I turned to leave, but James caught my arm.

"While we're here, I want to look in it, don't you?"

I hesitated. "Not really," I lied.

"Why don't you go first, then?" James asked with a smirk. "Since you aren't interested and all."

I narrowed my eyes at him and stuck out my tongue before slowly walking down the steps and standing in front of the mirror.

At first, I just saw myself, standing there exactly as I was now, but then I noticed the background of the mirror was showing Kings Cross station. A little ways behind me was my family: Finn, Cameron, Aerilyn and my parents, but they were slightly blurry. My reflection, however, was perfectly clear and smiling back at me.

I had a pretty good idea what this meant. I loved my family more than anything and I also loved pulling pranks and making people laugh, but sometimes I wished that people wouldn't refer to me and my brothers as 'the triplets' or me alone as 'one of the triplets' or 'the joke shop owners kid.' I wanted to be my own person without a reputation already made for me and without me always being combined with my brothers as if we were one blob instead of three separate people.

"What can you see?" Finn asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"I'm with my family," was all I said.

For some reason, I felt kind of guilty about what I had seen. I loved being a triplet. I loved the connection the three of us had and I loved being able to know what the others were thinking with just a single glance. I loved my parents, too. I loved the fact that my dad owned a joke shop. Most of my friends thought he had the coolest job in the world and I had to agree.

Sometimes, though, I felt like I had expectations to live up to and a predetermined reputation. I mean, what if I wasn't as good of a prankster as my dad and uncle? And what if it just so happened that I hadn't grown up to like pranks at all? It felt like people sometimes expected things of me. For example, I loved to read; just like my mum. Apparently, my dad wasn't a big reader and sometimes people are surprised when I say that I love books.

"Well, move out of the way," Finn was yelling, dashing down the steps. "It's my turn."

I stepped out of the way as Finn took my place in front of the mirror. I studied his face and from his expression, I could tell he was seeing something similar to what I saw.

"Kings Cross, too?" I asked with a small smile.

"Yeah," he nodded.

"I expect Cameron will see the same," I said.

"It's ironic isn't it," he said, "that we want people to know that we're three separate people, but things like this make it hard to prove our point."

"We _are_ triplets," I answered, staring up at the mirror, "but, yes, I know what you mean. We are three different people as well."

Finn nodded and his eyes scanned the image the mirror was showing him.

"Oi, can we break up the sentimental sibling fest down there?" James yelled.

"Yeah and you might have thought to include your other two siblings," Aerilyn joked as Cameron laughed. Finn and I laughed along with them.

We all took turns looking in the mirror. James handed Albus to Matt so he could have his turn.

"Well," James said, letting out a puff of air. "I guess that's it then. We're done. We did it."

"Yeah and that was only part one," I said, nudging him.

"You want to continue doing this?" he asked. "After what happened with Albus and what nearly happened to Aerilyn?"

I glanced around at everyone else. "Yes," I answered. "We're all going to be extra careful from now on and like always, we're going to look out for one another. We already started and now I want to finish it. I know we weren't raised to be quitters." I smirked once I had finished speaking.

"Wow, Lissie," Cameron said. "You're all systems go all of a sudden when a few days ago you were the most hesitant out of all of us."

"I know," I answered with a shrug and a grin.

"Now that we started this, you aren't ready to stop," Finn said, poking me.

I poked him back and he put me in a headlock.

"Get off," I whined, my voice muffled.

"Not until you say I'm the most handsome, kindest, loveliest, smartest sibling."

I snorted. "That's far from the truth."

"Yeah, because I'm the kindest, loveliest, smartest sibling," Cameron said.

"No, that would be me," Aerilyn joked.

"Ahem." I cleared my throat.

"You're all gorgeous, perfect angels," James interrupted. "Can we go now?"

"Yeah, I suppose we'd better," Finn said, letting go of me.

I was the last one back through the door and I glanced over my shoulder one last time at the room behind me as I closed the door for what would hopefully be the last time in the history of Hogwarts.


	9. Chapter 9

We used the brooms in the key room to get back through the trap door. James kept Albus secured tightly on his own broom. Fluffy was still asleep and snoring loudly when we got back. Not wanting to take any chances, we made sure to land as far away from the three heads as possible.

Albus had woken up on the broom ride back and was thrilled to hear that we had continued with our plan and hadn't backed down. I promised to show him the pictures as soon as they were developed.

"Same groups as before?" I asked as we peered out into the hallway, looking for signs of teachers, Peeves, or a certain annoying cat.

"Yeah," James answered. "I'll go first with Aerilyn and Albus. Shannon and Matt can follow in five minutes with Raina and Rose, and then you three," he glanced at me and my brothers, "can go five minutes after that."

"Got it," Matt nodded.

"If you run into Filch, ask him if he's feeling any better," I called in a loud whisper, causing everyone to burst into silent laughter.

"And ask him how the long tongued cat is while you're at it," Shannon added, resulting in more laughter.

Five minutes passed, which seemed like an eternity in the silence. Shannon and Matt left, pulling Raina and Rose by the hands.

"Tomorrow we can write in the book about what happened," I said, sliding down the wall to sit on the ground.

"You know," Cameron said, sitting beside me as Finn sat on my other side. "Someone should document Uncle Harry's story. It's a lot more exciting than ours."

"Everyone already knows about Uncle Harry," Finn said.

"Yeah, but not everyone knows all the details. Imagine how great it was if someone wrote it all down?"

"He'd be even more famous than he is now," I said. "Apparently, it's died down since he was younger, but do you really think he needs all that fame all over again? People wouldn't be able to just let him be himself."

"Well then someone should publish the book to the Muggle world," Cameron said, adjusting his glasses. "They won't actually think it's real, so it's not like we'd be exposed or anything."

"While we'd be laughing in secret at how they're completely unaware that our world really does exist," I said, giggling.

"Exactly," Finn said.

"It's been five minutes," Cameron announced, standing up. "We'd better go."

"Or you can stay right there," a voice wheezed.

We turned around and I almost groaned in annoyance and disappointment. It was Filch, holding a purring Mrs. Norris in his arms.

"No, I don't think I want to," Finn said easily with a smile. He tried to walk past Filch, but Mrs. Norris hissed and he jumped back. "Stupid cat," he mumbled.

"Mrs. Norris," Filch said, "is-,"

"Your only friend?" Finn suggested.

"—extremely old!" Filch exclaimed, his eyes going wide with anger. "Oh, you three are in for it. Follow me to your head of house's office, please." He looked joyful at the idea of us being in trouble.

"Oh, no reason to wake up Professor McGonagall," I said. "She's such a sweet lady; we don't want to disturb her."

"You should have thought of that before you snuck out in the middle of the night," Filch wheezed. "She's going to be furious with you!"

"That's our point," Cameron mumbled.

"What, may I ask, compelled you to wander the school at such late hours?" Professor McGonagall asked sternly ten minutes later when we were standing in her office.

"Well, we—I—uh," I stammered. I wasn't good with coming up with excuses on the spot. Apparently, I hadn't inherited that trait of my father's. I couldn't very well tell McGonagall what we had really been up to either. She would probably explode from anger.

"We were trying to prank Peeves," Finn said.

"Prank Peeves?" McGonagall asked. "You can't prank a poltergeist. I'd expect it would be near impossible."

"Well, we had to try," Cameron said. "You know us." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"I do know you, and I knew your parents, which means I know full well when you are being untruthful. Now, what is the real reason?"

I exchanged looks with Finn and Cameron. "Well, you see, I honestly don't think you want to know," I said.

Professor McGonagall closed her eyes. "I can't punish you accordingly unless you tell me what you did."

"Ah, so that means if we don't tell you, you can't punish us at all," I said gleefully.

"Not so fast, Miss Weasley." Professor McGonagall opened her eyes. "Don't go thinking you're invincible just because I was lenient last time." She glanced at Filch, who was standing in the corner, looking like Christmas had come early. Professor McGonagall looked back at us and continued. "If you don't tell me, I'll have to assume the worst, and assign the worst possible punishment."

"Oh, if only the old punishments were still in place," Filch said. "When Delores was here-,"

"We do not whip our students or hang them by their wrists in the dungeons," McGonagall said loudly, glaring at Filch. "However, we do punish students according to what they deserve, which brings us back to you three and what you did."

"What makes you think we were doing anything?" I asked. "Maybe we were just taking a nighttime walk."

"I'm having trouble believing that," McGonagall answered. "You were out of bed for a reason."

There were a few seconds of silence that seemed to drag on forever.

"Fine," Cameron said finally. "We were in the third floor corridor."

"The third floor—why?" Professor McGonagall looked as if she had been expecting anything but this.

"We were trying to experience what our parents experienced," I mumbled, digging my toe into the ground. All of a sudden the stone floor was a lot more fascinating.

"You were what?" Professor McGonagall paled.

Filch was practically doing a jig. "They'll have to go pack their bags now," he muttered to Mrs. Norris.

"But it wasn't as dangerous as it used to be," I protested quickly. "I mean, we've heard the story. We knew how to get past everything."

"That doesn't make it any less dangerous!" Professor McGonagall's nostrils flared. "Was there anyone else involved?"

"No," Cameron said quickly. "It was just us."

Finn and I nodded. There was no way we were going to rat out the others. That's not the kind of thing family did.

"I see," Professor McGonagall said. "So let me get this straight: the three of you thought you could see for yourselves what your parents experienced many, many years ago, putting yourselves in danger in the process, just for the fun of it?"

"We had it all planned out," I said. "We knew what was down there and what to expect."

"That doesn't matter," Professor McGonagall answered. "I wanted to have that dog removed years ago, but Hagrid insisted on keeping him here. He claims there's nowhere else to keep him, which I suppose is true. There's not many places a dog like that _can_ go…" she trailed off and looked back at us, having realized she had gone off on a tangent.

"We're sorry," I tried, hoping it would make her a little less angry.

She took a breath and looked at us. "I understand you are fascinated by what your aunts, uncles and parents have done and you're not alone, but what you did tonight was careless and stupid. It doesn't matter if you had it all planned out or that it's been years since anyone went down there. It still isn't safe and you're lucky that you didn't get any worse injuries."

We all had the red marks on our wrists from the Devil's Snare, but when I looked in the mirror over Professor McGonagall's shoulder I noticed I had a cut across the bridge of my nose and one on my chin as well. Cameron and Finn had scratches up and down their arms and across their faces as well. We hadn't even noticed them.

"Are you still going to punish us?" Finn asked.

"We may be mischievous but we have very angelic faces," Cameron added. We all smiled up at Professor McGonagall, whose mouth twitched upwards for just a second before returning to a straight line.

"Yes, I'm afraid you still must be punished," she said, sitting down in her chair.

"Alright, what is it, then?" I asked grimly.

Professor McGonagall looked at us. "I'm going to take away ten points each from Gryffindor and-,"

"But-," Finn interrupted.

"Be thankful it's not more," Professor McGonagall cut him off. "You will also each serve separate detentions."

"You're going to separate us?" I asked.

"Yes, I am, Miss Weasley. If you're anything like you're father and uncle, this probably sounds absurd, but I think it would be best if you each did a detention on your own. Cameron, you will serve your detention in the library with Madam Pince. She needs some help reorganizing the shelves."

Cameron looked like he was about to vomit. He didn't mind the library, but he wasn't fond of the librarian. None of us were, except maybe Filch. Everyone in the school had a theory that they were secretly in love.

"Finn," Professor McGonagall continued, "you will serve your detention with me, cleaning my classroom, especially the desks. There's one particular desk in the back row that has chewing gum all over the underside of it." She gave Finn a knowing look and he stared back at her with a look of innocence that we all knew wasn't real.

"Felicity," Professor McGonagall said, turning to me. "Your detention will be with Professor Longbottom. He needs someone to help him feed and water the plants in the greenhouses. All of your detentions will take place at eight sharp."

I nodded. That didn't sound so bad. Okay, so maybe the last thing I wanted to do at eight o'clock at night was go water a bunch of strange plants, but at least it was with Neville, well, Professor Longbottom.

"You may go now and please go straight to your dormitories." Professor McGonagall gave us a stern look.

"Of course," Finn said. "All of this adventure and excitement has got us pretty beat."

Professor McGonagall almost laughed. Her mouth twitched even more this time and she shook her head as she turned to the papers on her desk. "You may go now as well, Mr. Filch," she said to the caretaker, who looked devastated that they hadn't been expelled, but thrilled that they had at least managed detentions and points taken from their house.

"You lucked out, Lissie," Finn complained as we walked back to the common room. "You have the perfect detention."

"It's detention," I said. "There's nothing perfect about it. I can think of a hundred things I'd rather be doing."

"Yeah, but at least you get to go hang out with Neville. I'm stuck having to clean McGonagall's classroom. Do you know how long it's going to take me to get all that gum off?"

"At least it's your own," I shrugged.

"And Professor McGonagall isn't that bad to have a detention with," Cameron added. "Sure, she's strict, but she's-,"

"—bearable?" Finn suggested.

"Yeah," Cameron nodded. "Dragon snout," he said to the fat lady.

"Sure," she said sleepily as the portrait swung open.

"I'm going to have to deal with Madam Pince breathing down my neck," Cameron continued.

"But the library isn't such a bad place to be and maybe she won't bother you."

"She will," Cameron argued. "I'll be touching her precious books and she'll want to make sure I'm not sitting in the aisles, gleefully ripping out pages one by one. As if I would do that." He rolled his eyes.

"Where _have_ you _been?_" hissed a voice from behind us. We all jumped and turned around. The voice belonged to Rose, who was standing in front of the couch, clearly having jumped to her feet when we had walked into the room. Aerilyn and Raina were standing beside her and they all had their arms crossed and were tapping their feet. Matt, Shannon and James, however, were sitting in armchairs, fast asleep. James's head was hanging over the arm of his chair and his mouth was open slightly.

"Oh, we've been around," Cameron said vaguely.

"You got caught, didn't you?" Rose asked, coming around the couch and standing in front of the dormitory stairs so that we couldn't go up them.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"We aren't stupid," Aerilyn laughed.

"A blessing and a curse all wrapped into one," Finn shook his head.

Rose glared at him. She was easily the scariest when she was angry, just like Hermione and Grandma Weasley. I suppose every generation has to have one scary relative. I'm just glad it's not me. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

"Who caught you?" Aerilyn asked.

"Filch, but he brought us to McGonagall," I said. "Happy, now? Can we go to bed?"

"No, not yet," Rose said. "Does she know you brought us along?"

"No, we didn't tell her. You should know we wouldn't rat you out."

Rose's face softened slightly and she nodded. "Good, because I can't afford to get a detention so early into the school year. Imagine how horrible that will look?"

"What did McGonagall do?" Raina asked.

"Ten points each from Gryffindor and detentions," I said.

"Ten each? I'd expect more, actually." Rose looked surprised and slightly relieved.

"Thirty's still going to damage our score though," Raina said.

"Not enough to put us in last," Aerilyn pointed out. "Slytherin was only beating us by ten points before. It's forty points now, but we were beating Hufflepuff by fifty so we still have a twenty point lead on them."

"Impressive math," I said.

"Matt isn't the only one who can add quickly in his head," Aerilyn said with a sniff. There was a smile on her face, though.

"Are we through with the inquiry?" Finn whined. "I'm tired."

"You weren't so tired when we were all going down the trapdoor," Rose pointed out.

"That was earlier in the night," Finn answered. "Usually, Rosie, people get more tired as the night goes on. Or are you nocturnal and only get tired in the day time?"

"I'm not nocturnal," Rose whined, aiming a kick at Finn, who dodged it and ran up the boy's staircase, Cameron right behind him. "Missed me!" he taunted.

"Shut up, _Finny_," Rose yelled, knowing how much the nickname bugged Finn.

I high fived her. "I honestly don't know why he hates that nickname so much," I shrugged. "I think it's cute. Even my mum and dad think it's cute."

"It's the teenage years," Aerilyn sighed, shaking her head as if she were his mother.

"Yeah, well you'll be there soon enough," I teased, ruffling her hair.

"Stop," she whined, reaching up to fix it.

"Are you going on a late night date?" I joked, watching her continue to smooth down her hair. "Who's the lucky guy? Filch? Nearly Headless Nick? The boy in your year who eats his boogers?"

"Ew, no," Aerilyn said, sticking out her tongue.

"Oh, I know," I said, snapping my fingers. "It's that boy I saw you talking to yesterday at breakfast. What was his name? Joe? Josh?"

"_Jason_ only needed help with homework," Aerilyn answered. "I'm eleven. Boys have cooties."

"When will they be getting their shots?" I asked with a smirk.

"Never," she answered with a sniff, marching up the stairs. Rose and Raina followed her. I sighed and turned to wake up Shannon, Matt and James.

"One more word about Jason," Aerilyn called down to me," and I'll be sure to bring up Dylan all the time. Especially in front of Finn and Cameron."

"Fine," I said hurriedly. I had liked a boy at the very end of last year. He was my age and I had made the mistake of telling my brothers and sister about him. They teased me all summer until I threatened to hex them so bad when we got back to school that they wouldn't be able to feel their legs.

I nudged my cousins awake and then had to retell the story of how we got caught to them.

"I suppose this means you don't want to continue doing this?" James asked. "You know, our whole plan?"

"No, let's keep going. If we're careful, we won't get caught again. We've already started and I don't want to turn back."

James smiled, along with Matt and Shannon. "Excellent," they said together.

"How's Albus?" I asked. "Is he feeling better?"

"He says his headache went away and I told him after he got a good night of sleep, he'd feel a lot better."

"You don't think he needs to go to the hospital wing?"

"Nah," James shook his head. "He looks little, but really he's a tough guy; he'll be okay."

"Okay," I said, hoping he was right.

"Oh, by the way," James said, pausing on the dormitory stairs. "Have fun watering plants tomorrow night. I'll be sitting in an armchair by the fire, possibly playing chess with Albus. Or maybe even game of Exploding Snap." He smirked, knowing Exploding Snap was my favorite game.

I threw a chair cushion at his head and rolled my eyes. Maybe Aerilyn was right and it was just safer to pretend boys did have cooties and to just stay away from them.


	10. Chapter 10

The next night, I made my way down to the greenhouses for my detention. Before I had left, James had started a game of Exploding Snap with Albus right in front of my face just to taunt me. I could tell Finn and Cameron were annoyed by it as well. We had gotten caught and the others hadn't. It wasn't exactly the greatest situation, but all the same, I was glad that we hadn't told McGonagall about the others.

When I reached the greenhouse where I was supposed to meet Professor Longbottom, I saw he wasn't there yet. He was probably running late. Wonderful, now I'd be stuck in detention for even longer unless he got here soon.

I began to wander around, examining all of the plants. They _were _kind of interesting. I didn't want to touch any, though just in case they did something freaky. I had learned to never trust magical plants after a mandrake had nearly bitten my finger off last year.

"Oh, good you're here," said a voice.

I turned around to see Professor Longbottom hurrying through the door, his arms full of watering cans and plant food. I went over and took some of the objects from his hands. "Of course I'm here," I said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, I thought you might have decided to show up late or not at all."

"No," I said, putting the watering cans down, "if I came late, I'd only be here longer and if I didn't show up at all, McGonagall would find out and give me another detention. Since I don't especially like the idea of either of those things, here I am."

"Makes sense," he said with a nod. He began filling up watering cans one by one as I handed them to him.

"Actually," I continued, "I don't want Finn and Cameron to know I think this, but they told me I had the better detention out of the ones McGonagall gave us and I secretly have to agree with them."

"Why, what are they doing?"

"Cameron's with Madam Pince organizing the bookshelves and Finn's cleaning Professor McGonagall's classroom."

"You're right; you do have the better detention."

"Neville," I laughed.

"That's Professor Longbottom to you," he said, handing me the watering can he had just finished filling.

"Right, sorry," I said. "I just never know what to call you. I mean, you're so close to my parents and aunts and uncles that I've always called you Neville, but then when I got here-,"

"—you had to call me Professor Longbottom just like everyone else," he said with a smile. "I think you've answered your own question. It's not that hard, really."

"I know," I sighed as we continued to fill watering cans. After a few seconds, I spoke again. "My parents, aunts and uncles send you their love. Did I ever tell you that?"

"No," he said, looking as if he were about to laugh.

"Well I was supposed to, but I just got around to it now."

"Why's that?" Neville asked, shutting off the faucet and handing me the watering can he had just filled. He took one for himself and led me to the far side of the greenhouse.

"Because I couldn't very well tell you in class, could I? And Finn and Cameron most likely wouldn't tell you at all so it was obviously up to either me or Aerilyn and I knew she would most likely forget."

"Why couldn't you tell me in class?" Neville asked.

"Even for me, walking into class and giving you my relatives' love would be embarrassing. I don't see the big deal about telling you in class. I mean, I'm telling you now aren't I? Like I said, Finn and Cameron wouldn't have told you at all. Ever. It's harder for boys to express their feelings, I think."

"You seem to be quite the expert," Neville said, pulling some dead leaves off of a plant.

"They wanted me to tell you to say 'hello' to Luna as well," I continued.

"I will," Neville said.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Oh, she's fine," Neville answered. "She just got back from a two week trip with her father to look for, uh, well I can't remember the name of the thing…"

"The Crumple Horned Snorkack?" I asked, remembering what my parents had told me.

"Nah, I actually managed to convince her that they weren't real," Neville laughed. "She took it better than I thought she would."

I smiled and continued to water the plants. "What kind of plants are these anyway?"

"Mandrakes," he answered. "I'm surprised you didn't recognize them, or was that one of the many classes where you weren't paying attention?"

"I pay attention," I said defensively. "I just haven't been too fond of mandrakes since one of them bit me."

"Ah, that's right," Neville said. There was another brief moment of silence. "So," he continued, "what landed you in detention tonight anyway?"

I didn't answer. Instead, I bit my lip and continued to water the mandrakes. Neville had always been really close with my family and I found it easy to talk to him about lots of things, but I wasn't sure if I could tell him what my siblings, cousins and I had been up to recently. He might tell my parents and ruin it before we could even finish what we had started.

"Okay," Neville said slowly, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say it was something you're parents really wouldn't approve of."

"What makes you say that?" I asked, managing to keep my voice even.

"You usually love talking about your pranks. Your father and Uncle George were the same way. Loved getting a laugh out of people, they did. Anyway, now all of a sudden you don't want to talk."

I shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

"You don't have to tell me," Neville answered. "I get it. As long as it's not dangerous." He gave me a long stare until I finally cracked just a little bit.

"Well, we didn't think it would be but it turned out to be more dangerous than we thought."

"Is everyone okay?" Neville asked.

"Yeah, we're all fine," I answered, turning back to the plants. It wasn't exactly a lie. We were all fine _now_. We were lucky that Albus had simply been knocked out and nothing worse and that Aerilyn and James hadn't been hurt by Fluffy.

"You'll find our more about it eventually," I continued after awhile, "but for now we want to keep it a secret."

"Fine," Neville shrugged, "but you know you can tell me anything. You kids are like part of my family."

"I know," I answered, "and you will find out eventually, but just not now."

"Promise you'll be careful with whatever it is," he sighed.

"Don't worry, we will be," I assured him with a smile. That was the truth. We were going to have to be a lot more careful after the experiences we had through the trapdoor.

* * *

><p>"I think my hands are permanently cramped," Finn complained, collapsing into the seat next to me at breakfast the next morning.<p>

"Well my eyesight might be worse than before," Cameron said, sitting down on my other side. "I have never strained my eyes so much before. Honestly, Pince couldn't even give me a decent lantern to use."

"What about you, Lissie?" Finn asked. "Any complaints about your detention? Any body parts worse off than they were before?"

"Well, my hands do still smell like dirt and plant food," I said. "No matter how many times I scrubbed them last night, the smell wouldn't go away."

"Seriously?" Finn looked as if he didn't believe me.

"It's true. Want to smell?" I held my hand under his nose.

"No, I'm all set," he muttered, pushing my hand away.

"You know," Cameron said, looking up at the staff table, "I'm surprised McGonagall didn't write to our parents about what we did."

"I think she will if she catches us next time. She probably just figured it was a onetime thing and we won't do anything that drastic again," I shrugged. "That is why we have to be super careful next time. We have nearly a month to plan out the Chamber of Secrets adventure and we have to make sure we do it right. This time, I think Aerilyn, Rose, Raina, and Albus should stay behind."

"They won't like that. They already know the whole plan." Cameron shook his head miserably. "We're stuck with them."

I snorted. "They're two years younger than we are. We have authority."

"Not really," Finn said. "They'll tell mum and dad if we don't let them come. Those manipulative…" he trailed off, searching for a word.

"Hooligans?" Cameron suggested, using Grandma Weasley's favorite word.

"Yes," Finn said. "Those manipulative hooligans switched things around on us."

"We can get out of it," I said. "We just don't bring it up around them ever again and then we sneak away one night, get it over with and sneak back. They'll never know a thing and by the time they bring it up, we'll already have gone."

"And they'll be angry and they'll go to mum and dad," Finn said.

"Still a problem," Cameron agreed.

I sighed. "Fine, then you come up with a plan if you're so smart. I hate being the brains of everything."

"Far from it, sissy dear," Cameron teased. I punched him in the arm.

* * *

><p>I paid a visit to the boy's dorm that night, barging in without notice, causing Finn and Cameron's roommates to jump in surprise.<p>

"I need you two to write a little paragraph in here," I ordered, thrusting our scrapbook at Finn. It was opened to the trapdoor page. Everyone else had already written in it, even the younger cousins only because they had hounded me about it until I gave in.

"What's that, a diary?" a boy named Thomas asked.

"No," I answered as Finn began scribbling in the empty space left on the page.

I wanted to hurry up and get out of the room. It was probably infested with mold and boy germs. Except when it came to Brendan, one of my brothers' close friends. He definitely didn't have any germs. In fact, over the summer he seemed to have been cured of all icky boy germs. It was the first thing I noticed when I saw him in class on the first day. Anyway, now he was also part of the reason why I wanted to leave. I was uncomfortable and shy talking to him. Pathetic, I know, but it's the truth and I'm only human.

"So," Brendan said. I looked up. He was looking at me, meaning his 'so' had been directed at me. I think my lungs malfunctioned in that moment.

"Yeah?" I squeaked. Finn and Cameron looked up at me. My face turned even redder. Great, now they were going to find out about my little crush on their friend. Actually, I'm surprised they didn't find out sooner.

"That was some potion you made today in class," he smiled. He looked as if he didn't know what to say to me.

"Yeah," I nodded, "I just followed the directions." Well, _obviously_ I thought to myself. I was such an idiot.

Finn and Cameron were still squinting at me so I gestured for them to keep writing.

"Finny, you need to save me room," Cameron complained. "You're writing a whole book in there."

"I have a lot to say," Finn said. "Just like Lissie will have a lot to say when we see her at breakfast tomorrow morning. Right, Lissie?"

"Wrong," I said, snatching the book from him and tossing it at Cameron.

"Hey!" he yelped.

"I wasn't done," Finn said, trying to snatch the book back. Cameron held it above his head. Finn tackled Cameron and before I knew it, the other boys were all cheering them on and yelling. I stood there in the middle of it with my hands over my eyes. I groaned in frustration and impatience, but no one noticed.

"I'll leave you to sort this out on your own," I announced, edging towards the door. "Just give it to me at breakfast tomorrow. Don't forget."

I wasn't sure if they heard me or not, but I left the room in a hurry all the same.

* * *

><p>"Okay," James said the next night, brushing his quill across his chin. "We're going into the Chamber of Secrets on Halloween, do we all agree?"<p>

"Yes," the rest of us chorused. Finn, Cameron, James, Matt, Shannon and I were sitting in the secret passageway that lead to Honeydukes. It was one of our hiding spots where we could actually get a little privacy.

"The first Hogsmeade trip is the day before," James said, "so it won't interfere." He wrinkled his nose.

"Don't be disappointed," I said. "You'll be able to go next year."

"We'll bring you loads of Chocolate Frogs," Matt said, looking as if he could go for a Chocolate Frog at that very moment.

"Thanks," James muttered sadly. Then, he brightened a bit. "Anyway, so Halloween will be a perfect night to go. It'll be great."

"How are we going to manage the Parseltongue again?" I asked.

"Uncle Ron told me how my dad opened the Chamber of Secrets," James said. "He can do a pretty good imitation and we know it's accurate because Uncle Ron went down there too during the battle."

"So you're just going to imitate what Uncle Ron told you and pray it works?" Finn asked.

"Exactly," James nodded. "It's called winging it, a term I know we're all familiar with."

"A little too familiar," I agreed.

"We found something that might help us get there without being caught," Matt said, looking at Shannon. "It's a secret tunnel that goes from the seventh floor all the way to the hallway one over from Myrtle's bathroom."

"I thought there were only seven secret passageways," James said.

"In and out of the castle, yes," I told him, "but there are tons that go all throughout the castle. You know, located behind bookshelves, statues, suits of armor…"

"Okay, I get it," James said. "That'll be perfect," he added, looking at Shannon and Matt. "How'd you find it and where is it?"

"It's right around the corner from the common room," Matt began.

"All you do is turn right at the end of the hallway, and count three candle brackets down from the left side and pull it," Shannon continued.

"A section of the wall opens and there you have it," Matt finished.

"Great," James said excitedly. "That's going to come in handy."

"We still need to figure out how we're going to get back out once we're done," I said.

"Easy." Finn barely looked up from his homework that he was finishing before the next morning. "We use our brooms."

"Of course," I said, "how could I have missed that?"

"It's okay," Cameron patted my shoulder. "We all know you're the dumbest one here."

"Not true," I argued. "Who was it that came up with the scrapbook idea as well as plenty of the pranks we've pulled over the years?"

"You," Cameron mumbled.

"Thank you," I said calmly, leaning back against the wall.

James rubbed his eyes. "Alright, I think we're almost ready for this. Can we do this safely this time?"

"Of course," I answered. "No more danger."

"No more danger," James repeated with a nod. He broke into a smile. "Now the countdown can begin. Three weeks and counting until Operation Chamber of Secrets."

"Three weeks," I sighed. "Basically a lifetime."

"A lifetime and a half," Finn agreed, finishing his homework with a big, over-exaggerated scribble of his quill. I looked at his paper and saw that the very last word of the essay was written in huge letters.

"Why did you write that so big?" I asked.

"Because there was a length requirement on this essay and this word gave me the last few inches I needed," he answered proudly. "It's a nice touch, don't you think?"

"Just lovely," I smiled. "Who's the essay for?"

"Professor Binns," he answered dully.

"Well in that case…" I began. I took his quill and added a smiley face to the bottom left corner. "Maybe that'll cheer him up."

"Doubt it," Cameron chimed in. "He never smiles. He just floats there, inches above the floor, and drones on, and on."

"Poor Professor Binns," I said, shaking my head.

"Poor us," Finn argued. "We have to write essays for his class."

"Think of it as practice," Shannon shrugged. "We're writing our own type of history book aren't we in a way? Our scrapbook? Your essays are just more boring versions of that."

"Good point," Finn agreed. "Maybe Lissie is the smart one. She _did _come up with the idea for that book after all."

"I knew you'd see sense, Finny," I said. Then, I grabbed his essay and ran back towards the common room, laughing the whole way.


	11. Chapter 11

"Hey, Lissie!" I turned at the sound of a voice calling my name. My eyes widened and I almost stopped breathing. It was Brendan.

"Oh hello," I said nervously. "Where are you headed?"

"To Charms class," he said slowly. "You're in that class with me, remember."

"Right," I answered. "Sometimes I just forget-," I stopped short. I had been about to say that sometimes I just forgot he was there, but I couldn't say that to him. Plus, I never really forgot he was there, I was just trying to come up with a cover for my momentary lapse of sanity. "Never mind," I said quickly. "So what is it that you wanted?" I started walking again, keeping my eyes locked on the stretch of hallway in front of me.

"I was wondering if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade with me this Saturday. It's the day before Halloween, you know…"

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked with a giggle.

"Nothing," he said quickly. "I was just saying in case you forgot."

"I never forget when Halloween is and I couldn't possibly ever forget the date of the first Hogsmeade trip," I said. "They're too exciting to forget about."

"I agree," Brendan said. "So, do you want to go with me or not?"

I couldn't even believe what he was asking. He wanted me to go into Hogsmeade with him! Of course, when Finn and Cameron found out, they'd never let me hear the end of it. It had been bad enough at breakfast last week when they had bombarded me with questions and comments about Brendan.

"Sure, I'd love to go!" I finally said. I could handle Finn and Cameron along with any comments they threw at me.

"Great," Brendan said, a smile forming on his face as we entered the Charms classroom. "So, I'll just see you Saturday."

"Yeah, see you Saturday," I repeated as we headed to our seats.

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_I know it's been a few weeks since I last wrote to you and I'm sorry about that. A lot has been going on. One thing, for example is that I just got asked to go to Hogsmeade with one of Finn and Cameron's friends. I wasn't really sure who tell. I told Liz of course, since she's my best friend and all, but it's not like I can tell Finn and Cameron_._ They'd tease me to no end. I don't think Aerilyn cares that much either. She still thinks boys are disgusting, which they are most of the time. Sorry, dad, no offense._

_Anyway, that's why I decided to tell you. Now, before you freak out, he's a very nice boy and plus, it's just a trip into Hogsmeade, not a wedding. You have nothing to worry about._

_School is going wonderful. We've been pulling a lot of pranks on Scorpius, Filch, and Mrs. Norris. Oh, and the schoolwork is going well too, I guess. No, really, it is. I promise. _

_Okay, well, I have to go. Finn and Cameron are getting impatient. We're supposed to go pull another prank on Mrs. Norris. We're going to change her fur color to purple and orange stripes. Temporarily of course. Love you, miss you, and I'll see you at Christmas._

_Love, Lissie_

_P.S. Dad, thanks for sending more Skiving Snackboxes. We got them this morning. They're going to come in handy._

_Dear Lissie,_

_I'm sure whoever this boy is, he's very nice. Of course, if he turns out to be anything but nice to you, your father and I will personally deal with him. His tongue will reach a length that will put even Hagrid to shame. Of course, your father wanted to find this boy and submit him to questioning right away. If it were up to him, you wouldn't be dating until you were a middle aged woman. Possibly older._

_I hope you didn't get caught pulling any of these pranks. If you get into trouble, think of the example you're setting for your sister and younger cousins. Speaking of which, Neville told me you were in a detention with him not too long ago. Why is that? Do I even want to know? You also better make sure you do all of your schoolwork._

_Your father and I really do miss you. All of our kids are in school now. It's strangely quiet at the house. I suppose I miss the noise and commotion, although whenever Uncle George and Aunt Katie come over, it gets loud again with your father and uncle laughing and testing out products in the backyard. _

_By the way, Neville also told me you gave him our message. I'm glad one of you actually did it, even if you did tell him during your detention. Was it really so hard? I didn't think so. _

_Be safe and say hello to everyone for me. Enjoy your trip to Hogsmeade with this boy. What's his name, may I ask? I promise I won't find him to question him and I'll try to restrain your father from doing the same. Your father sends his love as well and we'll see you in a few months._

_Love, Mum_

_P.S. Your father didn't take offense to what you said about boys being disgusting because he said that when he was a little younger than you, he thought girls were equally as odd. I, personally, don't know how he could have thought such a thing._

"Neville told them about the detentions?" Finn asked, reading over my shoulder.

"Apparently," I answered, folding the paper back up, "but I didn't tell Neville what we did to earn the detentions and I don't plan on telling mum and dad so we're safe."

"It has to stay a secret until the end of the year," Finn reminded me.

"I know that," I answered impatiently, sticking the letter into my bag.

"I'm just reminding you. So," he wiggled his eyebrows, "are you excited for _Saturday_?"

I should have known Brendan would tell my brothers. There was no keeping a secret from them for long. "Why do you care?"

"I don't, really. I'm just teasing you."

"Do you also want me to hit you?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. I still had homework to finish, but I was so tired.

"No," he said quickly, opening his potions book.

The portrait hole opened and Cameron came into the room, followed by Matt, Shannon and James. "We've just pulled a prank on Filch," he said, taking the seat next to me.

"Without us?" Finn asked.

"You weren't around," Cameron shrugged, "and we needed to execute the prank fast."

"So what was it?" I asked, only feeling slightly upset that Finn and I hadn't been included.

"It was a traditional Muggle prank," Matt explained. "Dad sent us some itching powder from the shop. Filch had taken his shoes off at the door to his office like he does ever night so that he wouldn't track mud inside, so that's when we took the opportunity to put some itching powder in them."

"Lots of it, too," James added.

"When does it wear off?" I asked, wondering if I'd ever get to see the prank in action.

"It's supposed to last for a while," Shannon said, "but Filch won't put his shoes on again until tomorrow morning, so we'll get to see what happens at breakfast."

"Excellent," Finn said. "I still wish you had come to find us."

"Would you rather have risked getting caught again?" Cameron asked.

"No," Finn shook his head. "Mum and dad already found out about our other detentions. "Professor Longbottom told them."

"Tattletale," Cameron snorted, a small smile appearing on his face.

* * *

><p>Early Saturday afternoon, I waited by the front doors for Brendan to meet me. I fidgeted with my necklace and shifted from one foot to the other. Finally, he arrived and we waited in line to give Filch our permission slips. I noticed the caretaker wasn't wearing any shoes. He must have resorted to not wearing them at all until he could get new ones. I guess the itching was that bad.<p>

"Why isn't he wearing any shoes?" Brendan asked.

"My brother and my cousins put itching powder in his shoes. It's a Muggle prank."

Brendan blinked. "Oh. What's the funny part?"

"The funny part is that the victim won't be able to stop scratching."

"But Filch isn't scratching."

"Well they pulled the prank a few days ago, so it probably wore off and he's not wearing his shoes anyway so he wouldn't be scratching."

"Oh," Brendan said again, still looking as if he didn't understand the joke. I sighed. He normally had a sense of humor. Maybe he just didn't understand Muggle jokes. The only reason I understood them was because I knew all about them from the joke shop.

"So where do you want to go first?" I asked as we headed to Hogsmeade. "Zonko's?"

"Let's go to Honeydukes first," Brendan said, shaking his head.

"Okay," I agreed. I didn't mind. From what I had heard, Honeydukes sounded like the most fun place to go besides Zonko's.

Both of our mouths dropped open as we pushed open the door to the candy store. It was the most colorful, best smelling place I had ever been in. I immediately stepped the rest of the way inside and turned down the first aisle. "Look at all of this stuff," I breathed. "I've never seen so much candy in my life."

"Neither have I," Brendan answered.

It took a while for me to decide what I wanted to buy. Eventually, I decided on a package of chocolate frogs.

After Honeydukes, we visited Zonko's and then the Three Broomsticks for a drink. I slipped off my jacket and put it on the back of my chair as Brendan plopped into the seat across from me.

"Um, should we go get drinks?" I asked.

"Oh, right, yeah, I'll get them," Brendan said, standing up. "You stay here."

"Alright," I agreed, sitting down. I looked around the room as I waited for my drink. It was a large open room with wooden beams crisscrossing across the ceiling and plenty of room to fit the many wooden tables and booths placed all over. Sunlight streamed in through the big windows and there was a fire going in the fireplace that took up a large part of the far wall.

"Here you go," Brendan said happily, placing my drink in front of me.

"Thanks," I said as he sat down.

"Having fun?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah, I am. I really-," I didn't get to finish my sentence because at that moment, a group of Brendan's friends came into the pub and immediately made their way towards our table.

"Brendan, you've got to come see this," one of them said excitedly.

"See what?" he asked.

"We found the Shrieking Shack," Brendan's friend said, "and I got dared to go inside."

"Awesome!" Brendan said, standing up and grabbing his coat.

"You're leaving?" I asked.

"Yeah, I've got to see this," Brendan said, "but you can come if you want."

"Well, I guess," I said a little uncertainly. I didn't really want to go watch Brendan's friend go into the Shrieking Shack. I was actually a little disappointed that someone was going in before I did with my brothers, James, Matt and Shannon.

I was enjoying myself less and less as I followed Brendan and his friends down the path to the Shrieking Shack. We stopped at the fence that served as a warning to not go any further. The whole way over, Brendan had talked nonstop to his friends. He didn't even introduce me to any of them and he acted like I wasn't there. I could understand that he was excited, but that still didn't give him an excuse.

Eventually, I decided to go find my brothers. "Brendan, I'm going to go find my brothers. I promised I'd meet up with them today."

Brendan finally turned towards me. "Oh, you're leaving?" He looked disappointed and for a moment I considered staying.

"Yeah," I said. "Today was fun, though."

"Yeah, it was," he said with a small smile before his friend grabbed his arm and he was distracted once more.

I wasn't exactly sure where my brothers were, but I figured they would be in one of two places: Honeyduke's or Zonko's. I checked Zonko's first and luckily they were inside.

"Lissie, I thought you were with Brendan," Cameron said in a teasing voice as I approached them in the middle of the trick wand aisle.

Finn started making kissing noises and I shoved him. "No, I left early because a bunch of his friends came in saying that one of them had been dared to go into the Shrieking Shack."

"No way! Can we go watch?" Finn and Cameron asked together.

"No," I said quickly. "I just left them to come find you. Brendan ignored me the whole time we were walking down there. I was bored and left out."

"We were supposed to go in the Shrieking Shack first," Finn complained.

"Did you hear what I just said?" I asked.

"Yeah," Cameron frowned, "and I don't really like it."

"Do you want us to pummel him for you?" Finn asked, picking up a prank wand and hitting it against his palm twice. It turned into a bouquet of flowers.

"Not using that," I teased. "Seriously, it's okay. I'm not sure today was successful anyway."

"Why?" Cameron asked.

I shrugged. "We had a good time when we were alone, but at the same time, I didn't feel like there was much of a connection between us."

"Oh," Finn said. "Well, sorry, Lissie."

"That's all you have to say?"

"Yeah," he answered. "If you want to analyze Brendan's every move, go find Liz."

I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Don't tell mum and dad that he ignored you, though," Cameron suggested. "Dad will definitely find him and hex his head off."

"And then his blood will be on your hands. Possibly literally," Finn added.

I shoved him again. "I'll just wipe it off on you."

Finn made a face at me and grabbed a few more trick wands. "What do you think about using these on mum and dad?"

"I doubt it would work," I said, shaking my head. "Dad deals with those for a living and mum's known dad too long."

"I think she's more susceptible to it, though," Cameron said.

"No, I don't think so. She's smarter than we think," I countered.

"It's worth a shot," Finn decided, "and anyway, if it doesn't work on them we could always use these on other people like Uncle Percy."

"I can see his face now," I laughed.

"He's just so easy to prank," Cameron said, laughing too.

"Which is why we love him," Finn added, resulting in more laughter.

* * *

><p>The next night, my brothers and I met my cousins outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom with our broomsticks after the Halloween feast. None of us would ever dream of missing that feast.<p>

"Are we ready?" James asked seriously.

"Very ready," I answered, in an equally serious tone.

"Alright, so I don't think we should spend too much time down there," Shannon said.

"Why? It's one of the most interesting," James answered.

"It's also the creepiest," Shannon argued.

"Nothing was creepier than that three headed dog," Matt countered.

"How about we just get this over with?" I suggested. "I don't think we want to get caught standing here with our brooms and looking suspicious and plus I-,"

"What are you doing?"

I spun around to see my little sister standing alone behind us. "Nothing," I said quickly.

"You were talking about getting caught. You're up to something." She crossed her arms and gave me that look that was so similar to our mother's. "You're going into the Chamber of Secrets, aren't you?"

"No, we were just going for a late night fly around the Quidditch pitch," Finn said. "Now, go to bed."

"This hallway is on the other side of the school. You mean to tell me you walked across the castle from the common room instead of going straight down to the front doors?" Aerilyn kept her arms crossed and raised her eyebrows.

"Yes," Cameron said. "Plus, why are you all the way over here?"

"I was looking for you and saw you coming this way."

"You followed us?" James asked.

"You're going down to the Chamber of Secrets tonight aren't you? I was supposed to be in on this whole plan. Rose, Raina and Albus, too! In fact, I'm going to get them." She whirled around, but Cameron caught her arm.

"No, we don't have time for that," he said. "We need to get this over with so we're not wandering around the castle too late at night. We're going to need you to keep quiet about this. Just go back to your dorm and pretend you never saw us here."

"No, I'll only keep quiet if you let me come."

"Fine," James threw up his hands. "You can come just as long as the others don't."

"He doesn't mean to be rude," I said. "It's just that we don't need a bunch of extra people tagging along."

"We aren't just 'tagging along'," Aerilyn argued. "We can help."

"Okay, it doesn't matter," Finn said. "We just need to get in, take the pictures and get out."

"Aerilyn, you don't even have a broom," James pointed out.

"I can share with one of you."

"Any volunteers?" Matt asked.

Finn sighed. "Aerilyn, you can share with me."

"Oh good," she said excitedly, a grin spreading over her face.

"How is it that our younger sister can convince us to do things?" Finn asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," I mumbled back as Aerilyn marched ahead of us, looking a little too happy with herself.


	12. Chapter 12

It took James three tries to get the Chamber of Secrets open. When it finally worked and the sinks moved to reveal a long dark tunnel leading into the ground, nobody seemed to want to move. The only sound was a steady dripping of water coming from somewhere in the bathroom.

"How did you open that?" I felt a whoosh of air pass me and before we knew it, Moaning Myrtle was hovering in front of us, her transparent arms crossed.

"Uh, we told it to open and it did," James said nervously.

"You need to speak that snake language to open it," Myrtle answered. "I only knew two people who could speak it."

"Yeah, well one of them was my dad. Harry Potter. I was just imitating him," James said. "My uncle told me what my dad said to open the chamber and I imitated it."

"Ooh, Harry Potter is your dad?" Myrtle asked, her face cracking into a dreamy smile.

"Yeah," James said slowly. "Why?"

"I offered to share my toilet stall with him if he died. He had a knack for narrowly escaping death, though. Although, my offer does still stand. If he ever wants to come back…"

"Uh, no I don't think so," James said, wrinkling his nose. "Now if we're done here…"

"Why do you want to go down there anyway? There isn't anything down there anymore. Your father made sure of that."

"We just want to see it," I said. "We don't want to petrify anyone and it's like you said, there isn't anything down there. Even if we wanted to hurt anyone, we can't."

"It's not a nice place down there," Myrtle said. "If you die, I suppose you can share my toilet stall." She sighed exasperatedly.

"Great, thanks," James said, looking as if her offer was anything but great.

"We might actually have to take her up on that offer," Cameron mumbled as he peered into the pitch black tunnel.

"Don't be such a coward," James said, patting Cameron on the back. "In fact, why don't you go first?"

"Why don't you?" Cameron retaliated. "To see if it's safe."

"This part's the easiest," Myrtle contributed. "Well, it was the easiest when there was actually something down there to be scared of."

"Wonderful," Cameron sighed. He sat on the floor, his legs dangling over the edge, his broom across his lap. "If I die, I'm coming back to life to kill you all."

"You won't die," Finn said.

"Yes, I've heard you land on a nice pile of bones." Myrtle actually looked excited as if this were all some thrilling horror story. In a way, I guess it was.

"Bones?" Aerilyn yelped.

"Not human bones if that helps," Myrtle answered. "Mice and rat bones. The monster used to eat them."

"That doesn't help one bit," Aerilyn said, stepping backwards.

"Do you want to go back?" Finn asked.

"No," she said bravely, her expression returning to the determined one she had been wearing earlier.

"Alright, Cam, get a move on. We don't have all night," Finn said. "Need a push?" He held out his arms.

"No, I can handle this part." Cameron took a deep breath as if he were about to go underwater before pushing himself into the tunnel. We could hear him screaming the whole way, his voice getting softer and softer until we heard a thud and crunching sounds. "There _are _bones down here!" he yelled back up to us.

"Well I guess it is safe," James said with a small shrug. "Who's next?"

"I'll go," I volunteered. I decided against lighting my wand. It wouldn't make a difference anyway; my eyes would be closed the whole time.

I sat down at the edge of the tunnel and without giving myself time to change my mind I slid down into the seemingly endless darkness. Wind rushed past my ears and I kept my eyes closed and my mouth clamped shut against the screams that were threatening to come out. I seemed to be sliding down, down, down forever until the tunnel finally spit me out onto a ground covered with what were definitely bones. How lovely.

I waited by the wall with Cameron for the others to join us, which they all did shortly without a problem. That _was_ kind of the easy part. We really didn't know what else we would find hidden down here and it was also already partially caved in from when that memory charm had backfired all those years ago. Now that we were down here, we had no choice but to find out what was waiting for us ahead.

We all lit our wands and grasped the handles of our broomsticks tightly. James and Matt led the way followed by me and Shannon, then Finn, Cameron and Aerilyn.

All of us were covered in dirt and slime just from getting down here. I could tell Aerilyn was disgusted by that fact. She had her lips pursed and her nose slightly wrinkled as she examined her clothes. She kept her mouth shut, though and I was glad. I didn't want to have to tell her that none of us were all that thrilled by the state of our clothes.

We kept walking, our feet crunching on bones here and there. It seemed like we had been walking forever when we came upon a pile of rock with a small opening at the top, just big enough for a person to crawl through.

"Hold this," James demanded, handing Matt his broom. "Throw it to me when I get to the top." He reached out as if he were going to climb the mountain of rock.

I rolled my eyes and cleared my throat loudly. When I had everyone's attention, I mounted my broom, leaned forward to make myself as small as possible, and flew straight through the gap to the other side.

"Oh," I heard James say as I landed.

"Your turn," I called back in a singsong voice.

One by one, the others flew through the hole in the rock. Aerilyn was perched comfortably on the front of Finn's broom.

"Whoa," I heard Cameron whisper from behind me. I spun around and gasped. Most of the space behind me was taken up by a large snake skin.

"How long do you think it is?" Aerilyn squeaked.

"It's got to be at least sixty feet." Matt stepped forward and brushed his fingers along part of the skin.

"Sixty," I said under my breath.

"You're slacking," Finn said, taking my camera and snapping a picture.

"Who wants a picture of that?" I muttered.

"I do," he answered. "It's a sixty foot long snake skin. It's awesome."

"It is not," I argued. "It's disgusting."

"Let's keep going," Shannon said, looking as grossed out as I was.

I grabbed Matt's arm and pulled him away. We kept walking until we reached another door. It was circular with no handle.

"Tell it to open, James," I said.

He cleared his throat and imitated Uncle Harry again. The door clicked and swung slowly open. "Cool," he muttered.

We clambered through the door and down a small ladder into the next room and I knew this was it. This was where we had been aiming to be.

There was a long stone pathway that led to a gigantic statue of who I knew had to be Salazar Slytherin. Either side of the pathway was lined with tall, stone snake statues, their forked tongues sticking out as if they were mid-hiss.

In the stunned silence, I managed to take a picture. It was going to come out great, I could tell, but this place was just so creepy. It was a lot creepier than what had been under the trapdoor.

"Well, are we done?" I asked.

"No," Aerilyn said with a small laugh as if I were being ridiculous. "We have to explore a little bit."

"We haven't even seen the dead basilisk yet," James said. "I think it's down there around the corner. You need to get a picture of that."

"I'd rather not," I said, wrinkling my nose.

"Then I will," James said, holding out his hand.

"I'll do it," I answered, my voice showing a hint of irritation.

"Then come on."

I rolled my eyes as James walked away. Sometimes his bravery and sense of adventure was a bit too much. Nonetheless, we followed him towards the far point of the room. Just as he had predicted, the defeated basilisk, reduced to nothing but a pile of bones, lay just around the last stone snake head.

"Gross," Aerilyn said as she walked around the snake's skull. Its fangs still had dried blood on them and there were several fangs missing.

"Don't touch anything," I warned.

"I'll have to fight the urge," Shannon said sarcastically.

"Hey, don't insult my friend," Finn joked, gingerly patting the side of the skull.

"You need to pick better friends," I joked back, trying to find the best angle to take the picture from. I finally chose one and the camera clicked as I snapped the picture.

"Dead snakes are the only things that _will_ be friends with him," Cameron said. "It's not a matter of choosing."

"True," I said as Finn made a face at Cameron.

Naturally, James was the last one ready to leave. He had to look around the entire room as if he were memorizing it. He took in the ink stain on the floor and the Salazar Slytherin statue as well as the spaces in the basilisk's mouth where the fangs had been pulled out.

"Okay, I'm done," he finally announced.

"Congratulations, I'm a hundred years old," Matt said. He was leaning against one of the snake statues, staring up at the underside of its mouth.

"What?" James asked, raising his shoulders defensively. "It's interesting down here."

"It's gross and creepy," Shannon said.

"And boring," Aerilyn said. "There's nothing exciting down here."

"Then why did you come?" I asked.

"I came because I thought I'd be missing out if I didn't."

"But think of what _did_ happen down here!" James said. He pointed at the skeleton. "My dad killed that. It almost killed _him_! My mum almost died down here!"

"Yeah, that's the interesting part, but now it's just stuff to look at," Aerilyn said. "It wasn't like the trapdoor where we got to actually experience the things for ourselves."

"Okay, forget it, then," James said. "Let's go."

We made our way out of the room, up the ladder, past the snake skin, and back to the pile of rocks. I immediately saw a problem and it was a very big problem. Finn must have noticed it as well. "Uh, where did the hole in the rocks go?" he asked.

"It's gone," James whispered.

"The rocks must have shifted and now the hole is blocked," Shannon said.

My heart started to pound. We could try to shift the rocks out of the way, but were we strong enough?

"I think we can move the rocks," Cameron said, as if he had read my mind. "There are seven of us. We can do it." He bent down and tried to pick up a rock.

"Not from the bottom," Shannon said, "unless you want the whole pile to collapse."

"Right," Cameron nodded. He climbed up to the top of the pile and began pushing rocks out of the way. Finn went to help him and together they pushed rocks towards Matt and James, who passed them to me, Shannon and Aerilyn. It was kind of an assembly line. Hopefully, with our teamwork, we wouldn't be here all night.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: I'm going to be trying to move this story along a little bit now so it won't be dragging as much as before.**

**Thanks to anyone who's added this story to their favorites or alerts and to the reviewers. If you haven't reviewed, please do...don't be shy! I really want to hear what people think!**

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><p>After what must have been an hour or two, we managed to make a small gap in the rock and we managed to fly through and back up to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom without a problem. The only challenge now was going to be making it back to the common room without getting caught.<p>

We decided to make a mad dash for the common room altogether instead of in separate small groups like last time. One time, we heard Peeves coming and we hid behind multiple suits of armor and went unnoticed.

By the next morning, I had developed all of the pictures and put them in the book. I got everyone to write in it about the experience and then tucked the book safely back in my trunk. It was coming along nicely and I couldn't wait for it to be finished.

The month of November passed by slowly and uneventfully. My brothers, cousins and I pulled more pranks on Filch, Mrs. Norris and Scorpius. They were our favorite targets since they were probably the three most disliked people at school.

On the very last day of November, I found myself standing in front of the Whomping Willow, just out of the reach of its waving branches. My cousins, brothers and little sister stood slightly behind me. Rose, Albus and Raina had insisted on coming this time; they had been extremely angry that they hadn't been included last time, but relaxed once they were assured they hadn't missed much.

"Go ahead, Lissie," Finn said, handing me a long stick. I edged forward slightly and reached out as far as I could to try to hit the spot on the tree to get it to stop moving.

"A little further," Cameron whispered.

I inched closer, but it was a little too close. One of the branches collided with my side, knocking me to the ground.

"Lissie, are you okay?" Finn yelped.

"Fine," I muttered, standing up.

"Your cheek is bleeding," he noted, concern in his voice.

"No problem, just a little cut. We'll fix it later." I reached the stick out again. I was determined to do this.

I was knocked down again and again before I finally managed to get the tree to stop moving. As quickly as possible, the ten of us clambered into the passageway. It was small and we had to crouch down to fit properly. We also had to walk single file as the tunnel could only fit one across.

"I didn't realize how long this tunnel was," Rose complained.

"I didn't either," Albus said. "Although, it makes sense because we're walking from the grounds all the way to the Shrieking Shack, which is at the opposite end of Hogsmeade."

"We knew that, genius," James sighed.

"Be nice," I said, reaching behind me and smacking his head.

"Hey," James whined, rubbing the spot where I had hit him.

Finally, we made it to the end of the tunnel and crawled out into the Shrieking Shack. Cameron and Finn started making ghost noises and walking around the room wiggling their fingers.

"This place is creepy," Aerilyn whispered, crossing to one of the windows, blocked by a broken shutter.

"This is where Voldemort killed Snape," Shannon whispered.

"I know," I whispered with a slight shiver.

"No, I meant right _here_."

We all turned to see Shannon looking at a space of wall near the floor. "Ugh, there's blood," Raina cried.

"I'm going to be sick," Rose said.

"It's just blood," James said, but he looked disgusted too. I knew what Rose meant. It wasn't the fact that it was blood, but the thought that a former Hogwarts professor had been murdered here.

"I was named after him," Albus said. "My middle name. Severus."

"Oh, that's right," Shannon whispered. She put her arm around Albus.

"Want to take a picture with the bloody wall?" James smirked.

"James!" I said, smacking him again. "No! We're not taking a picture of it at all."

"Why?" he complained.

"For one thing, it's gross, and for another, it just feels disrespectful for some reason."

"I know what you mean and I agree with you," Matt said. "No picture. Not of that at least."

"Fine," James shrugged, moving around the room. "Let's go upstairs. I think that's where my dad first met Sirius."

We followed James up the rickety, decrepit staircase and into the first room we found.

"This is it," James said with a nod.

I looked around. There was a canopy bed on one side of the room that had collapsed. There was also a fireplace with a dusty mirror hanging above it. Other than that, the room was empty.

"Look at this," Albus said, pointing to the floor. We all looked. There were dirty paw prints covering the floor that turned into human prints along the way.

"Sirius," James whispered, bending down and lightly touching the prints. I knew he was thinking about his grandfather's best friend and the man who he had been named after.

"This I can take a picture of," I said with a smile, raising the camera. James looked up and smiled into the lens, his fingers still on the paw prints. The camera clicked and I lowered it once more. "Perfect," I smiled.

The mood was instantly ruined when we heard a noise from downstairs. "What was that?" Rose whimpered. We all moved into a tight huddle in the center of the room.

"This place isn't really haunted," James said, "so it can't be a ghost."

"It must be the wind or the house making noises," Cameron said.

"There is no wind," I whispered.

"Then it's the house," Cameron answered. "It's old, it makes noise."

"I heard it again," Aerilyn snapped. "It was closer this time."

"It was coming from the stairs," Raina whispered. "Someone's coming up the stairs!"

"No one is coming up the stairs," James said, trying to sound confident. It wasn't really working, though.

"What do we do?" Aerilyn asked.

I wordlessly raised my wand and pointed it at the door. Everyone else did the same and we waited in silence. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. Other than that, it was silent for another moment or two until we heard another creak, even closer this time.

"Ghosts don't make creaking noises," Finn said.

"There aren't any ghosts anyway," James said. "What people used to think were ghosts was just Professor Lupin."

"You don't think that's him, do you?" I asked, realizing I had no idea if it was a full moon tonight.

"No, it shouldn't be, there's no full moon," Aerilyn said, answering my question. "Rose and I checked."

"Brilliant of you," Finn said.

"Anyway," Rose added, "if it were Professor Lupin, he wouldn't be sneaking around. He'd probably be running around like crazy."

There was another creak. "Oh, really, that's enough," I sighed. "Who's there?"

The door banged open and we were face to face with Scorpius Malfoy and his two Slytherin friends. He was smirking at us. "I'm no werewolf, but I think you're going to be in trouble when I tell Professor McGonagall that you were out here. I think I'd rather face the werewolf, wouldn't you?"

I made eye contact with my brothers. We couldn't afford to get caught again. We had to get out of this somehow.


	14. Chapter 14

Everyone in the room was silent, which was a good thing because getting out of this predicament was going to take some thinking. We could have just asked Scorpius what it would take for him to go away and leave us alone, but that would give him what he wanted. It would give him satisfaction.

"I don't think you want to go to Professor McGonagall," I said finally.

"Why not?" Scorpius asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're out when you aren't supposed to be _and_ you're in the Shrieking Shack. You aren't even on school grounds. That's two things against you. If I tell McGonagall, you'll be kicked out for sure."

"If you tell McGonagall," I said calmly, crossing my arms, "she'll know that you were out after hours and in the Shrieking Shack as well. Unless, of course, you've found a way to be here without really being here."

Scorpius actually blinked in surprise before he recomposed his expression into his usual sneer. Apparently, he hadn't really thought this out. Either that or he thought we were stupid, which we most certainly were not.

"I could tell her that I was tipped off that you were coming out here tonight," he said defiantly. His tone clearly said 'try to worm out of that one!' I smiled as I realized we could.

"Yes, but you still have no proof. Who do you think is more trustworthy? You and your 'tip off'?" I made air quotes around the words, "or us?"

"Me!" Scorpius cried. "You're a bunch of pranksters!"

"Prankters, yes, but not liars. Those are two terms that are not to be used interchangeably," Cameron said matter-of-factly.

"Whatever," Scorpius brushed off Cameron's words with a wave of his hand. He looked like he was in deep thought about what to do next. "Fine, I won't say anything to McGonagall-,"

"Wow," James said, looking impressed. "That's a first."

"-under one condition," Scorpius finished, his arms folded.

"There's a condition," Finn sighed. "Of course there's a condition."

"You have to buy me all the candy I want from Honeydukes on the next Hogsmeade trip."

"Not all of us are old enough to go to Hogsmeade," Shannon pointed out.

"Good point," Scorpius smirked. "Whoever's old enough to go can buy me the candy. Whoever isn't, can do my Potions homework for the next month."

"Thanks Shannon," Raina mumbled.

"No," Aerilyn said. Everyone turned to look at her.

"What?" Scorpius asked. His pale eyebrows almost shot up off his head.

"No, we won't do your Potions homework for you. We have our own homework to do and we have our own lives. I can't speak for the others, but I won't do it."

"That breaks the deal then," Scorpius said. "I'll have to go tell McGonagall.

"Go do it, then," Aerilyn challenged. "Like my sister said, you'll be turning yourself in as well and if you tell her someone tipped you off, you have no proof that we actually did come out here."

"It's worth a try, isn't it? Who's really to say if she'll believe me or not?" Scorpius asked. "If you aren't going to do what I've asked, then I think I will go pay her a little visit."

We stood in silence, thinking of what to do or say next.

"Obliviate," someone said suddenly. The faces of Scorpius and his two friends went blank and their expressions became distant.

We all turned to see Rose standing there with her wand outstretched, looking proud of herself. "I was hoping that would work. I've never actually done one before."

"You can do a memory charm?" James looked about ready to fall over from shock.

"Apparently, yes," Rose said, stowing her wand away. "Like I said, I've never attempted until now, but I've been reading about them to get the general idea. I've been waiting for someone to practice on, actually, so Scorpius came along at the perfect time. His memory should be modified so that he won't remember coming out here at all. Tomorrow morning, everything will be perfectly fine."

"You are truly brilliant," Cameron said.

"Thank goodness Aunt Hermione is so smart," I said.

"Thank goodness Rose inherited the smart genes," James snorted.

"You're all smart too," Rose said modestly.

"Oh, stop being modest," I said with a smile. "Sometimes I'm really glad you're around."

"What about us?" Aerilyn, Raina and Albus asked.

"Not so much," I teased as we began ushering Scorpius and his friends back to the castle. They kept asking questions about how we had gotten outside and they were pretty disoriented, but they would be fine. They were just confused because there was a pretty big chunk of time missing from their minds.

When we reached the castle, we ushered them down the hallway towards the Slytherin common room before running as fast as we could back to our own warm and cozy common room.

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><p>Christmas was coming. That was the one thing keeping me going through all of my schoolwork. Soon, we would be on break and we would have no classes or homework to worry about for a while.<p>

We also had the Potterwatch cave to look forward to. I didn't think anything too horrible could happen there and we would be in and out. Although, knowing the boys, they'd want to spend ages in there. I wasn't looking forward to spending any more time than necessary in a dark, cold cave, no matter how interesting it was.

The train was noisy, chaotic, and filled with laughing and yelling students. Everyone was letting out excitement and energy about finally being on Christmas break.

I made my way through the train to one of the last compartments with my brothers and Aerilyn right behind me. Our cousins would be meeting us later.

Once they finally did join us, we spent the train ride playing Exploding Snap and trying to fill Scorpius's compartment with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder from the joke shop. We finally succeeded when we were minutes from home and I high fived my brothers enthusiastically.

"There they are," Finn said as we got off the train. He pointed with the hand not holding his trunk towards our parents. Uncle George was there too with Aunt Katie.

Aerilyn took off running and I began running after her, our owl's cage swinging from my hand and Dobby the owl screeching noisily. My camera was bouncing against my chest as I ran, but I didn't mind.

Aerilyn reached our parents first and ran straight into mum's arms. I ran to dad and he grabbed me in a tight hug. "Have you grown in the past few months since you left for school? You look taller. I mean, I could have sworn you were this tall when I last saw you." He held his hand a few feet off the ground.

"Dad!" I complained. "I wasn't _that_ short!"

"At one time you were," Mum said, hugging me while Dad hugged Finn and Cameron who had caught up to us.

Mum and Dad asked us about school and the four of us began talking at once.

"Wait, wait, one at a time," Dad laughed, holding up his hands.

We each took turns telling them all about the school year so far. Of course, we had to leave out the biggest parts, but we had pulled enough pranks to have plenty to tell.

"I hope pranks weren't the only things you were focusing on," Mum said with a small smile.

"I hope they were," Dad said. Mum elbowed him and gave him a look to keep quiet.

"Of course they weren't, Mum," I said. "You don't have to worry."

"They do their homework," Aerilyn said. "I see them at it, but sometimes it takes Finn a lot of prodding."

"It does not!" Finn protested.

"As long as it gets done," Mum said, "and done well."

"Lissie got owl prints all over one of her Herbology essays," Finn said, smirking at me.

"I bet Neville loved that," Mum said, rolling her eyes as Dad laughed.

"He did," I said, sticking my tongue out at Finn. "He laughed and didn't even take any points off."

"Blah blah, he didn't even take any points off," Finn mimicked, making a weird face.

I playfully hit his arm and stuck my tongue out again.

"Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a long Christmas break?" Mum asked with a sigh and a laugh.

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><p>I barged into Finn and Cameron's room and jumped onto Cameron's bed, bouncing excitedly. No, it wasn't Christmas morning yet. It was still Christmas Eve, but I was excited for another reason.<p>

"We finally know what's so significant about the tree house!" I said excitedly, still bouncing. Our parents had finally told us the story about how they met and started dating.

"Brilliant," Cameron said tiredly, sinking lower into his bed.

"How can you sleep?" I asked, pulling the covers off of him and racing over to jump on Finn's bed. "Don't you care?"

"Yeah, it's a great story, but no we don't care as much as you do," Finn mumbled. "Go find Aerilyn and talk to her."

There was a small giggle from under Finn's bed. I hopped down and peeked under there. Aerilyn was lying on her back under the bed, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide at her mistake of giving herself away.

"What are you doing under there?" I asked.

"I was going to scare Finn and Cam, but I accidentally giggled."

"The first rule of hiding is that you can't giggle," Cam said from under his blankets across the room.

"I _know_ that," Aerilyn huffed as I grabbed her arm and dragged her out, "but I couldn't help it."

"I'm glad you're here, though," I said. "You can back me up. Aren't you glad mum and dad told us the story? It was cute, right?"

"Adorable," Aerilyn agreed. "So there, Finny. And you too, Cam."

"Great," Finn mumbled, stifling a yawn.

"I think our adventure for January should still be the tree house," I said. "I mean, it has a ton of meaning."

"Sure," Finn said, his face muffled by his pillow.

"Actually," I whispered, my eyes widening. "Let's switch the cave to next month. We have to do the tree house now."

"Now?" Cameron and Finn yelped together.

"Why now?" Finn asked, sitting up.

"It's Christmas Eve," I said, looking at them as if they were slow.

"So?" Cameron asked.

"So," Aerilyn said, comprehension dawning on her face, "Mum and Dad got engaged on Christmas Eve."

"In the tree house!" I finished excitedly.

"But the tree house is all the way behind our grandparent's houses. We can't Apparate and we definitely can't walk there."

"Then we fly," I answered, surprised at how fast the answer came.

"You're mental," Finn said. "It's winter, it's cold out, it's night time, and you want to fly over to the Burrow to see a tree house."

"It's a special tree house!" I said.

"What about the others?" Cameron asked. "They'd want to come but we can't rally them all up tonight."

"We're all going to the Burrow tomorrow anyway for Christmas," Finn said. "Can't it wait until then?"

"The other's can go tomorrow. I want to go now. Please can you come too?"

"I'm in," Aerilyn said.

"See? She'll go with you," Finn mumbled, lying down again.

I yanked the covers off. "Please?" I begged.

Finn sighed. "Oh, alright, but we have to be quiet."

"Obviously," I said. "We can't have mum and dad asking any questions or else they'll find out about the whole plan."

Excitement was racing through me as we grabbed coats and snuck out into the hallway. We paused at our parents' door to make sure they were asleep. They were, so we dashed down the stairs and out the back door to the broom shed in the yard. Cameron passed us all brooms and we climbed onto them.

My hands were starting to get cold, but I hardly noticed as we flew towards the Burrow and the tree house. It was going to mean so much more now that I knew the story and that we were visiting it on the anniversary of my parent's engagement. I also knew for a fact that it wasn't dangerous and we wouldn't get in trouble unless we got caught, which I was confident wouldn't happen. This was going to be my favorite part of our adventures.


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: I hope everyone likes this chapter and don't forget to review! :)**

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><p>The tree house was every bit as fascinating as I thought it would be. Finn and Cameron even showed a little interest once we got there, but it faded quickly and then they wanted to leave. I agreed after I snapped a picture.<p>

We snuck back into our house and tiptoed up the stairs. Everything was quiet. I couldn't believe we hadn't been caught.

As soon as we reached the top of the stairs, the light flicked on. Blinking in the sudden light, I shielded my eyes with my hand and stifled a groan as I heard my mother's voice. "Where have you been?"

I guess I had been wrong. We were definitely caught and we were definitely going to be in some trouble.

"Out," I said simply. "Couldn't sleep." My eyes finally adjusted to the light and I saw my mother standing in her bedroom doorway, looking furious. Dad was behind her. His face wasn't angry, but it was serious, and that scared me a little. Dad was never serious unless it was a really serious occasion. I guess our sneaking out was really serious.

"None of you could sleep?" Mum asked. "I know it's Christmas Eve, but it seems highly unlikely that all four of you wouldn't be able to sleep so badly that you had to leave the house and the yard."

"Aud," Dad whispered, putting his hands on mum's shoulders and giving them a squeeze. "Let's just let them explain where they went."

"We went to the Burrow," Aerilyn said.

"The Burrow?" Dad asked. "Why?"

"You disturbed your grandparents in the middle of the night?" Mum raised an eyebrow. "Why? Are they alright?"

"I'm guessing they are," Cameron said. "I'm sure you would know if there was anything wrong before us, wouldn't you? Anyway, we didn't go _into _the Burrow. We wanted to see something outside."

"What would you possibly want to see outside of the Burrow that you can't see right—oh," Mum said, bringing a hand to her mouth.

"What is it?" Dad asked.

Mum turned her head and looked up at him. "They went to the tree house," she said quietly.

Dad looked back at us, a small smile on his face. "Is that where you were?"

"Yes," Finn nodded.

"Naturally you'd want to visit again after your father and I told you the whole story," Mum said. "I should have known. I actually did suspect it, but I never thought you'd go in the middle of the night. It's freezing outside and none of you have jackets."

"It's too late for that now," Dad said, "but your mother's right. There was no need to go in the middle of the night. You should have waited and asked us to bring you one day."

"We had to go tonight," I said. "It's Christmas Eve. You got engaged on Christmas Eve."

Mum's mouth opened and closed. "That's very…sweet of you," she said quietly.

"I remember the day I proposed to you," Dad said, smiling at Mum and shifting some of her hair off her neck.

"Can you not act all lovey dovey in front of us?" Finn asked.

"We didn't do anything," Dad protested.

"I wanted to put a stop to it before it got worse," Finn said.

"Are we going to be in trouble?" Cameron asked. "I'd like to know so I can just go to bed."

"Of course, _now_ you're tired," Mum said. She turned to Dad. "What do you think?" she whispered.

Dad looked back at her, clearly thinking about how to answer. "It's Christmas," he finally said, "and they are safe and sound now, so I think we should let them off this time, don't you think?"

"I suppose we can just this once," Mum agreed. She turned back to us. "As long as you realize that we never want you to sneak out in the middle of the night again."

"Okay," I said.

"Promise us," Dad said.

"We promise," we all said at once.

I let out a relieved breath as I finally crawled into my bed a few minutes later. We had gotten really lucky that our parents hadn't decided to be incredibly strict with us.

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><p>After a lot of discussion between my brothers, cousins and I on Christmas Day, we decided to go to the Potterwatch cave on New Years Day. We were all going to be spending the day at Grandma and Grandpa Parker's house, so it would be easy to sneak out to the cave. It was during the day as well, which made it less creepy, but it also made it easier to be spotted and we couldn't have our parents know what we were up to.<p>

When the day came, we waited around impatiently until we finally got the opportunity to sneak out of the house. The adults and older cousins were all sitting around in the living room and talking. It was slightly crowded, so that at least made it easier to get out of the house unnoticed. Now we just had to make across the yard and under the cover of the trees without anyone seeing us through the window.

In the end, James stood just outside the window, watching what was happening inside and gesturing with his hand for us to go. When we had all ran across the yard and into the woods, he himself joined us under the cover of the snow covered trees.

We had bundled up this time, but I still found myself shivering as we walked. "Are you sure you know where this place is?" I asked.

"We're positive," Finn and Cameron said together.

"Yeah, I remember dad telling us about it too and we're going the right way," Matt added.

"We better be," I mumbled. I didn't really fancy getting lost in the woods during the winter.

It seemed like forever had passed before we finally reached the cave. I was actually surprised we had reached it at all seeing as none of us had actually been there before; we were just going off what our parents had told us. Plus, there was a lot of snow almost hiding the cave from view, which made it harder.

"Let's go," James said excitedly.

"I don't understand how this is better than the tree house," I said, rolling my eyes and following him inside.

Finn was the one who answered me. "It's a _cave_ first of all," he said with a sigh. "Secondly, this is where Potterwatch happened and where Mum and Dad and Uncle George got captured by Snatchers. It's a lot better than where our parents spent a few nights and where they got engaged."

"It's special to them!" I exclaimed. "And if they hadn't gotten engaged, we wouldn't be here."

"Whatever," Finn answered nonchalantly.

"This place is special too, you know," Cameron added.

"I know, and that's why we're here, but I like the tree house better," I argued defiantly.

"Okay, if you say so," Cameron shrugged.

We walked deeper and deeper into the cave. It was dark, even with our lit wands, and little clumps of dirt kept falling from the ceiling.

"I think this is good enough," James said suddenly, taking a seat on the ground.

"You mean we're staying?" I asked.

"Yeah, we're staying," Finn said as he, Cameron and Matt joined James on the ground.

"Why?" Shannon complained.

"There are bugs in here," Rose added.

"Yeah, so?" James asked, reaching up and grabbing Rose's hand. He pulled her down to sit beside him.

"You're not scared, are you?" Finn asked, looking at me.

"No," I answered defiantly, sticking my nose in the air. I sat down and moments later the others who had still been standing sat down as well.

"What now?" Aerilyn asked.

"Well, Lissie has to take a picture," James said, looking at me and grinning.

"Okay, fine, then can we leave?" I asked.

"Maybe," James smirked.

I set the camera on a rock and set it for self timer. "Everyone huddle," I ordered.

My cousins acted fast and grouped together, the darkness of the cave behind them. I made myself comfortable behind Finn and Cameron who were sitting cross legged in the front. I threw my arms across their shoulders and smiled as the flash went off.

"Okay, picture's taken, I think we're done," Shannon said, rubbing her hands along her arms to warm herself.

"Should have worn warmer clothes," Matt teased.

"I have about five shirts and a sweater on!" Shannon argued.

"Shh," Albus said loudly, silencing the two. "What's that noise? Do you hear it?"

I did and I could tell the others could as well. It was a noise like falling dirt. A sliding sound and a few thumps.

"Uh-oh," James said, comprehension dawning on his face. He jumped up and ran for the exit, the rest of us behind him. When we got to the exit, well, there was no exit. Not anymore, at least. The mouth of the cave had collapsed. We were trapped.


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Sorry for the slow updates on this story! I'm going to try to start updating faster. Don't forget to review :)**

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><p>"This is not good," I said, trying to start digging our way out, but it wasn't doing much. The dirt had fallen into a tightly packed pile.<p>

"You think?" James asked, his voice filled with panicked sarcasm.

I turned and looked behind us where I knew my younger sister and cousins were standing. I couldn't see them in the darkness, and I was glad. I was ashamed. As the older cousins and siblings, we were supposed to protect them and we had been leading them into danger all year. This had apparently been the last test of fate and now we were all going to pay for it.

"I wish we had our owl," Finn said. "We could send a letter out for help."

"There's no hole that he would get out of," I reminded him. "If there was a hole, we wouldn't be stuck in the first place."

Finn sighed and I heard him sink to the ground.

"Is everyone alright?" I heard Matt ask.

"Fine," the others chorused. They didn't sound scared at all, which shocked me. I didn't know how they weren't panicking at a time like this. I was certainly on the verge of it.

I sank to the ground and I heard the others doing the same. I felt and heard movement beside me before a warm and slightly sweaty hand took mine. "Lissie?" It was Aerilyn's voice.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"We're going to be okay?" It sounded halfway between a statement and a question; as if she had been trying to comfort me and herself but wasn't too sure of what was going to happen. "Mum and Dad, someone, _anyone _will come rescue us. Right?"

I took a deep breath. I hoped so. They were sure to notice we were gone sooner or later, but would they check the woods. Would they check the cave?

"They will," I told her. "Don't worry. We'll all be fine."

"Don't lie," she whispered.

"I'm not lying," I answered.

"You are. If you really don't know, then don't say you do."

"I was just trying to-,"

"I'm old enough to handle the truth, don't you think?"

I let out another sigh. "I really don't know what's going to happen to us and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I got you into this. I'm sorry I got you all into this."

"It wasn't just you," Finn's voice said from across the cave. "It was me too."

"And me," Cameron added.

"Us too," Matt and Shannon said in unison.

"Me as well," James said, clearing his throat guiltily. "We're all really sorry."

"We begged to come along," Rose said reasonably. "You would always tell us not to come, but we always begged. It's partially our fault."

"So if we're rescued," Cameron said, "we all agree that everyone is to blame? No trying to get out of trouble?

"No," Rose said. "We'll all take the blame. All of us, together."

"We solemnly swear," Albus agreed.

"Cam, they really shouldn't have to take any blame. We're older," I said.

"Lissie," Cameron complained. "Mum and Dad will kill us."

"So? We deserve to be in trouble."

"We do too," Aerilyn added. "Like Rose said, we came along. We asked. We basically forced you to take us."

I didn't say anything to that. No one did. We sat in silence for what seemed like hours and hours. It just might have been too. There was no way of knowing how much time was passing. It was cold and dark and I was personally getting a little hungry and tired. I wondered if we were being searched for yet.

* * *

><p>"Lissie, wake up," I felt someone urgently shaking my shoulder.<p>

"What?" I asked, slightly irritable. When I remembered where we were, however, I sat up quickly.

"You fell asleep." Aerilyn's voice was close to my ear. "We can hear someone coming."

"How long was I asleep for?" I asked, jumping to my feet and making sure I still had my wand.

"We don't know. Maybe for about two or three hours." It was Finn who answered this time. "Just be quiet, though, we're trying to listen."

I sat completely and totally still and sure enough, I could hear a muffled noise coming from outside the cave.

"It could be just an animal," Rose said.

"Pessimist," Albus whispered.

"No, I'm just being logical," Rose answered.

"Just be quiet," Finn hissed. "There are a lot of footsteps."

"There could be a lot of animals," Rose said.

"Rose, will you just be quiet?" James asked.

"I can hear voices," I added. "Animals definitely don't talk."

"But who _is _talking?" Albus asked.

"Our parents of course," James said, sounding annoyed.

"James, please," I begged. "We don't have time to be arguing."

"We've been in this cave for hours. We have plenty of time."

I glared at him, but then I realized he couldn't see me in the darkness. "Don't you think I'm cold tired and hungry as well?" I asked. "Just lay off."

The voices outside were growing louder as well as the footsteps. I heard movement next to me as someone moved towards the closed mouth of the cave.

"Do you think they'll be able to hear us through all of the dirt?" Aerilyn asked. I could hear her moving closer still to the pile of dirt and placing her hands on it.

"It's worth a try," Finn said.

We gathered around the enclosed cave entrance and started trying to dig our way out again as we began shouting for our parents. I was praying they would hear us. I was really starting to get cold. The boys had given the younger kids their jackets so they would be warmer and have an extra layer of clothing and I definitely didn't want to take that away from any of them. I was also sure the extra jackets wouldn't be doing much by this point. We had been in here for too long and I wanted all of us to get out.

After a moment the footsteps stopped, but the voices continued. I couldn't make out exact words, and I doubted anyone else could either, but the voices were familiar.

"It's definitely our parents," I said.

"Thank goodness," Rose answered, shivering in the cold.

"Do you think they know we're in here?" Albus asked.

"I'd say they do," I answered. "Maybe we should move back a little so when they move the dirt we'll be out of the way."

We all scooted backwards and waited. I wished they would hurry up and rescue us, but at the same time, I was terrified. I knew we were going to be in so much trouble.

"Look," Aerilyn said quietly.

Sure enough, a thin stream of what had to be moonlight had appeared. It grew bigger and bigger as the dirt fell away.

"We're free!" James exclaimed.

"James Sirius Potter!" Aunt Ginny's voice called. "You get out here right now! If you're not hurt, you're going to be in so much trouble!"

"I'm hurt," James called back.

"That's not even funny," Aunt Ginny answered. "And I meant that you would be in trouble either way, but we'd have to deal with your injuries first if you were injured. Now get out here."

"And bring the rest of your cousins with you." That was mum's voice. I was actually scared to face her. She wasn't terribly scary when she was angry, only a little, but dad on the other hand wouldn't yell at us. Instead, he'd be disappointed, which was somehow so much worse than yelling.

"Who wants to go first?" James asked.

"You do," I said, giving him a small push.

"No, you go. You're older."

"James, just go," I said quietly. I didn't want to get into even more trouble.

James looked at me, sighed, and began crawling to the cave entrance. I could tell he was scared too.

Our parents were silent until all of us were lined up in front of them. I glanced at my siblings and cousins out of the corner of my eye. Even in the moonlight, I could see that they were smudged with dirt. I could only imagine what I looked like.

"Would any of you care to explain why you were all in this cave in the first place?" Aunt Hermione had her arms crossed and her foot tapping. Her bushy hair was almost getting bigger from fury. Uncle Ron stood slightly behind her as if content to let her do the yelling and discipline thing.

"Well," I began. I still didn't want to tell them about our original plan. We were going to have to make something up that was as close to the truth as possible.

"We were curious about it after we heard that Potterwatch was held here," Rose said calmly. It was a good excuse and it was true.

"We should never have told them," I heard mum whisper as she looked at dad. He didn't respond, but continued to look down at us, his expression solemn, but otherwise unreadable. Mum continued to talk, this time specifically to me and my siblings. "First the tree house and now this. Both times you snuck out and we had no idea where you had gone. What's going on?"

"We were curious about the places you went." I looked her in the eye and hoped she would stop asking questions.

"Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you let us know where you were going?" Aunt Katie asked.

"You wouldn't have let us come," Matt said.

"You don't know until you ask," Uncle George countered. "Who knows? Maybe we would have taken you."

"It would have been a lot safer with adult supervision," Dad said. "We could have done something to prevent the cave entrance from collapsing. Ask your mum, she knows all about that."

"We know what she did. She used a charm to prevent it, but we're not of age yet."

"But we are," Dad said, gesturing to the adults. "You really should have asked us."

"We've all stressed that you can come to us with anything," Aunt Katie added.

"Exactly," Aunt Hermione nodded. "Do you understand how scared we were to find out that you were nowhere to be found and none of us could remember seeing you for hours?"

"How did you know where to look anyway?" I asked.

"You weren't in the house or the yard and you couldn't have Apparated. All of our brooms were where we had left them so we knew you hadn't taken those. The only place left was the woods and then Fred and George remembered the cave."

"You could have died," mum said. "If we hadn't found you…" she trailed off and shook her head as if she didn't want to think about it. I didn't blame her. I didn't want to think of it either. Dad wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him.

"I think we're going to need to discuss an appropriate punishment," Aunt Ginny said.

"It's going to be terrible isn't it? A huge punishment," I sighed.

"We can understand you're curious, but maybe we told you the story too early," Uncle Harry said. "Maybe we should have waited."

"No, you shouldn't have," I said. "We _are_ curious, but it doesn't matter what age we are. You're famous, Uncle Harry, and what all of you did when you were at school…"

"It's just incredible and we wanted to do something incredible too," Finn continued. "We wanted to _be_ incredible like you."

"Exactly," Cameron nodded.

The adults shared glances. "You don't need to _do_ something incredible to _be _incredible," dad said.

None of us answered. We didn't know what to say. All we could do was wait for the punishment.

"We're going to have to discuss this," Aunt Hermione said. "We'll go back to the house and when we come to an agreement, we'll let you know."

"Okay," we mumbled.

"Okay, now get back to the house."

We silently obeyed the orders. When we crossed through the backyards of my grandparents' houses, I looked up at the treehouse. It looked eerie for some reason tonight. Maybe it was because our adventures kept somewhat losing their excitement once we got caught and we had been getting caught a lot lately, it seemed.

I tore my eyes away from the tree house to glance at my parents. My mum was looking at it too. She saw me looking at her and smiled a small half smile. "I look at it every time I walk by," she whispered. "Habit, I suppose."

"Does Dad know?" I asked with a smile.

"Of course I do," he said. "I'm walking right next to her and I'm not deaf. I happen to have both my ears."

"Hey!" George exclaimed.

"He still seems to have incredible hearing though," Dad muttered.

"Do you hate that I wanted to go there so badly? To the tree house, I mean."

"Why would we be mad about that?" Dad asked.

"We're only upset that you had to sneak out to see these places," Mum added. "I think it's sweet that you wanted to see the tree house so badly. I'm glad you're interested, actually."

"It's your special place, though. You and dad's. You spent so much time out there as kids and dad proposed to you there."

"Nearly gave me a heart attack too, the way he did it," Mum smirked.

"I told you I didn't want to be your boyfriend anymore-,"

"-because you wanted to be my husband." Mum smiled up at him.

Despite the fact that I knew a punishment was awaiting me, I sighed happily and took one last glance at the tree house. I think if it could have feelings, it would feel pretty proud of itself. It was practically a historical landmark. For my family at least.

* * *

><p>"We're not going to be able to leave our rooms until we go back to school," James mumbled angrily. We were sitting in the living room while our parents discussed our punishment in the kitchen. Extendable Ears were no use because they had put a charm on the door that would prevent us from hearing anything. Sometimes I really hated having parents who were well acquainted with pranks.<p>

"That actually isn't a long time, really," Cam said. "We'll be going back in the next week."

"A week in your room alone seems like a lifetime!" James flopped to the floor and lay on his stomach.

"Too bad that your dad spent a lot of time in his room as a kid," Aerilyn said. "He probably thinks one week is nothing."

"Yeah, maybe he'll put you in your room for longer!" Finn teased.

"We're all getting equal punishment so in this case what's mine is yours," James retaliated. That got Finn to shut up and I smirked.

We fell completely silent as the living room door opened and our parents entered. "Well?" I asked finally breaking the awkward and tense silence.

"We've decided on a punishment," Mum said seriously.

I held my breath as I waited to hear what was coming.


	17. Chapter 17

"That had to be the worst second half of Christmas break ever," Finn complained. We were on the train back to Hogwarts and currently looking for an empty compartment. The older and younger cousins had all gone to sit with various friends earlier on, so it was just us middle cousins left: me, Finn, Cameron, James, Matt and Shannon.

"It was only our third Christmas break," I reminded him. "We've only been at Hogwarts for two and a half years. James has only had two Christmas breaks."

"Still, out of the ones I've had, that was the worst." Finn gave his trunk a forceful shove further down the aisle.

"I have to agree," Cameron said, sliding open the door to the last compartment, which was empty. Good thing. I was beginning to think we'd have to sit out in the hallway.

"So do I," I sighed.

"Well it's not our fault that our parents decided to keep us on lockdown for the rest of the holiday," James sniffed.

"It's not?" I asked. My eyebrows flew up in surprise and interest. "Whose fault is it then?"

"Our parents were the ones who punished us." James stuck his trunk on an overhead rack and shrugged, sitting down nonchalantly in a seat. The rest of us stood in the doorway, looking at each other. "What?" James asked.

"They punished us because of what we did," I said. "Come to think of it, we should have just told them what we wanted to do."

"And ruined the entire plan?" James looked shocked. "If you had told them about the tree house and we had told them about the cave and the reason why we wanted to go to those places then we would have had to tell them about the other stuff as well."

"Not necessarily," Matt shrugged as the rest of us took a seat. "We could have used the excuse Rose came up with after we got caught. We were so fascinated that we just had to check it out. We didn't have to mention the other stuff we did. We could have made it look like it was just the tree house and the cave we were interested in."

"True," James said.

I leaned back in my seat and thought. I had been thinking about the story my parents had told us on Christmas Eve. They had finally told us the story of how they had met and they had basically told us all about their relationship. I kept replaying the biggest moments in my head, especially the romantic ones. Suddenly, I got an idea. "Hey," I said. "Remember how we couldn't think of something special to do for the month of June?" I dug into my bag and pulled out the list I had made a few months ago, with every month of the school year written on it and what we planned to do during that month. Sure enough, the spot next to June was blank.

"Yeah," the others said slowly.

"The tower," I said excitedly. "Oh, please can we go. I know the boys will think it's cheesy, but it gives us something to do and it isn't dangerous so we can't possibly get in trouble unless we go after hours, but we won't because we have to go at sunset, we just _have_ to." I was speaking in a rush, but I didn't care. My brothers and cousins apparently cared, though.

"Whoa, slow down," Finn said, holding out a hand to stop me. "What tower are you talking about? Hogwarts has plenty of them and why do we _have_ to go at sunset?"

"Don't you remember the story mum and dad told us on Christmas Eve?"

"Of course I remember, but they told us a lot." Finn shrugged.

"I don't know what you're talking about at all," James said, folding his arms and pouting.

"And you think we do?" Shannon gave James a playful shove.

"Our parents told us how they got together and about some of the things they did when they were dating," I said. "Twice, my dad brought my mum to this tower hidden behind a stretch of wall. It's all open and according to mum, it's the perfect place to watch the sun set."

"Ugh, that sounds boring and disgusting," James groaned.

"What, may I ask, is disgusting about a sunset?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at him.

"It's so, I don't know, gooey and romantic!"

"It's only romantic if you make it romantic and trust me we aren't going to because _that_ would be disgusting." I shot him a look and crossed my arms. "Do any of you have a better idea? I mean, we could just do nothing for June, but I thought it was something easy that would keep us out of trouble and-,"

"If we go, we're going to stay long enough for the stars to come out," Cameron interrupted.

Everyone turned to look at him. "Cameron, I didn't know you were into _gooey_, _romantic_ stuff," I said, shooting James another look. James stuck his tongue out at me.

"No," Finn said, clearly understanding what Cameron was thinking. "Cameron's just thinking ahead. If we're going to be out at night, might as well get our Astronomy homework done."

"We'll be going at the end of the year," Shannon said.

"So? Teachers still give homework right until exams. Don't ask me why, but they do."

"Wow," I said, "so I'm guessing that you won't be taking any future girlfriends up there?"

Finn and Cameron looked at each other. "No," they said together.

"Charming," I said. "Sometimes, I'm not sure if I'm even a triplet. It feels like it's you two against me."

"Aw, don't feel that way, Liss," Finn said, coming to sit next to me. He threw an arm around my shoulders. He grinned and patted my shoulder. "Cam and I understand. You're into that stuff because you're a girl. Girls like sunsets and towers."

"They also like pushing brothers _off_ of towers," I said, sticking my tongue out at him. He jumped back up and moved back to his original seat.

"Alright, alright," he said, holding up his hands. "I don't understand. You want us to be nice to you and then you insult us."

"You know I love you," I said, smirking. "Just like I know you and Cam love me." I gave them both a sweet smile.

"That's why Cam and I hid a chewed wad of gum in your neatly folded pairs of socks that are currently in your trunk," Finn said, laughing.

"I already saw that," I said nonchalantly. "I went to confront you two about it, and ran into Cam first. After that, he ever so nicely agreed to help me put melted chocolate in the back pocket of one of your jeans. Although, I can't remember which pair it was." As Cameron tried to stifle his laughter, I tapped my chin in thought.

Finn's eyes widened comically and he jumped up, trying to look at the back of the jeans he was currently wearing.

"You really did that?" Shannon whispered, leaning towards me with a smirk.

I nodded. "We did, but what Finn doesn't know is that we did it to a pair of old jeans that he usually only wears at home, so we saved him some embarrassment, except not from our mum and dad. Surely they'll find the jeans lying on the floor and have a moment of panic as they wonder if, in the chaos of raising triplets, they forgot to potty train one of them."

"I'm sure Finn will be getting some concerned filled letters in a few days then," Shannon grinned.

"I'm sure he will," I smirked, watching Finn ask James if there was a stain on the back of his pants.

"I'm not looking at your behind," James said.

"Oh, don't be immature," Matt scolded. He broke into a grin and winked at me. "Finn, if Lissie hadn't just told me what she did, I'd think you had an accident."

Finn's eyes widened, but I shook my head and rolled my eyes. "Don't worry, Finn. Cam and I didn't ruin those jeans."

"Aw, Lissie, you ruined it," Cameron laughed.

"You were in on this?" Finn said, sitting down and throwing a look at Cameron, but it was obvious he was trying not to laugh.

Cameron nodded. "We have to mix up the gang-up pairs," he shrugged.

"So," I said with a business-like tone, "did we decide on going to the tower or not?"

"Why not?" Finn and Cameron shrugged. "We'll get our homework done and it'll be one more thing that we can do."

"And one more thing that Lissie can take pictures of and add to the book we're making."

"Exactly," I said with a smile. "But you know that if you all hadn't agreed, I would have ended up going alone."

"Rubbish," Finn said. "We wouldn't have let you go alone. It may not be dangerous, but we can't have you going on nightly adventures without us, can we?"

"I'm glad you care so much, Finny," I said, smiling.

"Don't call me that," he pouted. "It's bad enough that Aerilyn already calls me that."

"What, you don't like it, _Finny_?"

He threw a Puking Pastile at me. "Go barf in a ditch."

"Or on your head."

"Ah, nothing like sibling arguments," Matt said, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Incredibly entertaining."

Finn and I both threw Puking Pastils at him. "Go barf in a ditch," we said together.

"Charming," Shannon sighed, but she clearly was having trouble hiding her smile.

* * *

><p>"The Room of Requirement," James said in a whisper. I was standing between him and Finn. Cameron, Matt and Shannon were standing close behind us as we looked at the blank wall that concealed the Room of Requirement.<p>

"Do you think it'll still work?" I asked. "You know, after that fire all those years ago."

"I don't see why not," Cameron said and even though he was behind me, I knew he was shrugging. "It's a magical room. Plus, it was only the room of all the hidden objects that was set on fire. We're not going to that one. We want to see where the D.A. practiced."

"It's all the same room, though, isn't it?" Shannon asked.

"Well, there's only one way to find out if it works or not," Cameron shrugged. "Come on."

We followed the instructions that our parents had told us in their story: walking past the empty wall three times and concentrating on what we wanted. By the third time we walked by, I was holding my breath out of anxiety. In silence, we turned to face the wall, but nothing was happening.

"It didn't work," James said miserably.

"It's okay, James," I whispered, but I was disappointed as well. I had desperately wanted it to work. I grabbed James's arm and started to pull him away, expecting the others to follow, but Shannon let out a little squeak.

"Look!" Matt said. He was pointing to a spot at the very bottom of the wall. Turning back and squinting, I could just barely make out something forming in the wall. It grew bigger and wider until a door had taken shape.

The six of us stared at it in absolute, wide-eyed silence for what seemed like a lifetime until Finn finally broke it. "It worked," he breathed. "It worked!" he said louder, with a small laugh.

"Let's go!" I said, charging for the door and closing my hand on the doorknob. I could feel everyone crowding around me to get a glimpse into the room and I was pretty excited myself, so I didn't waste any time in throwing the door open.

"Wow," all of us said at once. We slowly stepped into the room. It was huge and lined with mirrors, making it seem even larger. There were multiple fireplaces, bookshelves, cushions and practice dummies.

"This is incredible," I whispered, walking around the perimeter of the room, looking at the books on the shelves.

"You know, maybe we should have brought the others with us," James said. "Rose would have loved these books."

"True, but we wouldn't be able to get her to leave," Finn said, rolling his eyes.

"They can come back whenever they want," I added. "We know it works now, so there's no stopping them from coming or us from coming back."

"What's this?" Shannon asked, picking up a very old piece of parchment that was yellowing with torn edges.

I joined my cousin on the far side of the room and peered over her shoulder. The first thing my eyes fell on was my mum's name, fourth from the top, below Aunt Hermione's, Uncle Harry's and Uncle Ron's. Below my mum's name, was my dad's name and below his was Uncle George's. "Our parents' names are on this," I said in a whisper, pointing.

"What's it say at the top?" Cameron asked, squinting. By then, everyone had crowded around me and Shannon and was trying to read the paper.

"It's kind of faded," Shannon said, squinting as well and bringing the paper closer to her eyes.

All of a sudden, James gasped and pointed. "It says Dumbledore's Army! This is the sign-up sheet for Dumbledore's Army! Look at all the people who signed it. It's everyone mum and dad talked about. Look, there's Professor Longbottom, Luna, mum, dad, all our aunts and uncles…everybody!"

"I thought Umbridge took the list when she discovered the D.A. so that she could assign detentions. How would it end up back in the Room of Requirement?"

"I doubt she kept the list," Cameron said. "I mean, once she assigned the detentions and she believed the D.A. to be old news, she had no need for it. Plus, she must have cleaned out her things once she left Hogwarts."

"So you're implying that she threw it away," Matt said, "which would mean that it would be in the garbage, not here."

"Maybe she lost it and never got to throw it away," Finn suggested.

"Then it would go to the room of hidden things," I said.

"Which is this room," Finn argued.

"Not really," I shrugged. "This room is a lot of different rooms all in one, but they're all separate."

"Keep it," James suggested. "At the end, when we show our parents the book we made, we'll show them this sign-up sheet and ask them about it."

I nodded in agreement, but now I already couldn't wait to ask about that sign-up sheet. I was extremely curious to figure out how it could possibly have ended up back in the Room of Requirement when everyone thought it had been taken by Umbridge.


	18. Chapter 18

"I'll get you two back one day," Finn said a few mornings after we had gone to the Room of Requirement. The mail had come in and Finn had just ripped open a letter dropped onto his plate by Dobby the owl.

"For what?" I asked, not getting it. I poured some cereal into a bowl and spooned some into my mouth.

"For that chocolate prank you pulled. Mum sent us a letter and at the end they wrote _Oh, and Finn, we do have a functioning bathroom in our house. There is no need to use your pants. Love, Mum. P.S. Your father knew it was chocolate right away, but for a few minutes you had me terribly concerned. I'm assuming you either left a chocolate bar in your back pocket again. Either that or this is your brother and sister's doing. In which case, of course, you'll have to prank them back, so your father gave me some Honeyduke's chocolate that he stole from Uncle Ron's candy stash. He suggests you use it well, and by that I'm hoping he means you'll eat it and prank your siblings in a less embarrassing way._"

Cameron smiled from across the table. "It seems like Mum can't make up her mind on whether or not you should prank us back or not."

"Well, I'm going to," Finn decided.

"Hey, at least you weren't embarrassed. Dad knew it was chocolate," I said.

"Yeah, but mum said she didn't at first. For a while, my mother was walking around thinking I had had an accident. That's still awkward and embarrassing enough."

"So," I said, reaching into my bag and pulling out the book we were making, which had been completely updated. "What do you think so far?"

"I think it's brilliant," Finn said proudly, flipping through the book.

"Mum and Dad are going to love it," Cameron said confidently.

"Do you think they'll be really mad?" I asked. "You know, that we did all of this stuff? Mum told us she didn't want us doing any of it, remember? When we subtly brought it up on Christmas Eve and made it seem like we were joking about it?"

"Yeah, but she can't do anything about it. By the time we mentioned it to her on Christmas Eve, we'd already done a few of the things on our list. By the time we show her our book, we'll have done all of them," Finn said. "And when she sees we're all still alive and well, it'll be fine. The only time something completely serious happened was when the entrance to the cave collapsed, which they already know about, so the worst is over, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but March is almost here and we agreed that we were going to go down into the lake. That actually is pretty dangerous. Lots of stuff could happen down there."

"Not if we all stick together," Finn argued, "and the best part is that we don't have to rescue anybody or stay under for an hour. If we want to stay longer, we can and if we want to get out sooner, then we do it."

"Yeah, it'll probably be sooner than later," I mumbled.

"Scared?" Finn teased.

"No," I answered, "but do you know how gross it'll be down there? It'll be all murky and full of seaweed and-,"

"Oh, yeah, seaweed is so gross and terrifying," Finn said.

"I know what Lissie's saying," Cameron chimed in. "Everyone knows that when you go swimming and seaweed touches you, it might as well be the giant squid trying to eat you up."

"True," Finn said, "but we can't chicken out now. We came this far."

"Yes, I agree," I answered, "but this time we definitely have to keep it a secret from the younger kids. They definitely can't go down there. We'll just bring them back to the Room of Requirement and they can come with us to Dumbledore's tomb and the tower where Mum and Dad watched the sunset."

Finn and Cameron nodded in agreement. "Yeah, those are the safer ones."

I nodded. "So, how are we going to get the gillyweed?"

"We're going to steal it from the Potions storeroom," Finn said, looking at me as if I were an idiot. "How else would we get it? I mean, unless you're growing some in your sock drawer…"

"No," I sighed, "I meant, _how_ are we going to steal it? We can't just march in and take some."

"Of course not," Finn said. "If we did that, we'd get caught. We have to sneak in there. Honestly, are you related to Dad and Uncle George or not?"

"Of course I am!" I said defiantly, giving him a swat in the shoulder.

"You sure about that?" Finn teased.

"Yes, although that means I'm unfortunately related to you."

"Insulting," Finn mumbled as I grinned at him.

"You're so mean!" I turned around to see Aerilyn standing behind me with her hands on her hips.

"What?" I asked.

"You went to the Room of Requirement without me!"

"How did you-?"

"I can see the pictures from here."

I sighed. "Yes, we went because we can't do all of these things with everyone coming along. It gets too hectic and a lot of this stuff can be dangerous."

"You're thirteen. You're not some kind of old, experienced person, you know," Aerilyn argued, "and the Room of Requirement is not dangerous. I want to go, and I'm sure Rose, Albus and Raina will want to come too."

"Fine, but you can't come with us this month to do the lake. That one is even dangerous for us and we really shouldn't be doing it."

"Lissie," Finn groaned.

"I'm telling you, it's dangerous," I said.

"Fine," Aerilyn agreed, "but you _have _to take us to the Room of Requirement. Either that or we go with you into the lake."

"Yeah, okay, we'll go to the Room of Requirement," I said. "We were going to take you anyway."

"Oh, and we found this." Cameron reached for the book and from in between the last two pages, he pulled out the Dumbledore's Army sign-up sheet, passing it to Aerilyn.

"What's this?" she asked.

"What does it look like?" Finn asked. "It's the Dumbledore's Army sign-up sheet."

"Where did you find it?" Aerilyn asked, squeezing into a seat between me and Finn.

"In the Room of Requirement," Finn said impatiently.

"But how-?" Aerilyn asked.

"That's what we have to figure out," I said. "Umbridge was the last person to have it as far as we know and I highly doubt she would have put it back in there herself."

"We're going to ask mum and dad when we show them our book at the end of the year."

"Can we ask them sooner?" Aerilyn begged.

"No," Finn said. "It would give our entire plan away before it's over."

"We've had a few close calls where we were almost discovered," Aerilyn said. "I hardly think this is one."

"Still," Finn said, taking the paper back from her.

"Okay, so when are we going to the Room of Requirement so I can tell Rose, Raina and Albus?" Aerilyn asked.

I shrugged. "This weekend?"

"Yeah, because James said next weekend is when he wants to go into the lake," Cameron said.

"Do you really think you'll be okay down there?" Aerilyn asked, looking concerned.

"We'll be fine," Finn said, patting her shoulder. "Don't worry about us."

"We appreciate your concern," I said, smiling and giving her a hug.

"Okay, well make sure you don't die."

"We're going to be stealing gillyweed from the Potions storage room," I said. "We'll be able to breathe underwater, so we'll be fine."

"You're stealing gillyweed?" Aerilyn asked. We nodded. "Well, when you do that, try not to get caught. Then again, it will give me something to laugh at."

"Shut up," Finn said as I laughed.

"Maybe you are related to us after all," Cameron smirked.

"Unfortunately," Aerilyn said, smirking back.

Sticking my tongue out at her, I stood up and looked at my brothers. "Come on, we have to start planning our gillyweed-stealing-lake-surviving strategies."

"Gladly," Finn and Cameron said. "This beats homework by a mile."

"Agreed," I said with a grin.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Don't forget to leave a review!**


	19. Chapter 19

"I'm not even sure how we managed to do that," I said, leaning against the wall in the Gryffindor common room. We had just gotten back from stealing the gillyweed from the Potions storeroom. We had had to steal a lot—enough for six of us, but there was a pretty large amount already there, so we hoped that what we took wouldn't be missed.

Tomorrow we were going to go into the lake. Tomorrow night, actually. Going at night made the whole thing a lot scarier, but we didn't want to risk anyone seeing us.

"It was easy," James said, tossing his own piece of gillyweed between his hands. "Nobody was in there. It's nighttime."

"Yeah, but Filch could have walked in any second. Or Mrs. Norris," I said.

"But they didn't," James said. "Anyway, stealing the gillyweed wasn't even the hardest part. The hardest part will be tomorrow night."

I nodded.

"Lissie," Finn began. "How are you going to take pictures underwater?"

I looked at him as if he was crazy. "I can't. Bringing the camera underwater will break it."

"That stinks," Finn groaned. "How are we going to get any good pictures?"

I shrugged. "I'm not breaking my camera."

"There must be a charm or something to put around the camera to protect it," Cameron said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, but we don't know any," I shot back.

"I'm sure we could find one in the library," Cameron reasoned.

"It's late enough as it is," I said. "I'm not in the mood to be pouring over books for tomorrow night."

"Fine, if you want everything to be ruined," Finn said.

"I don't _want_ everything to be ruined," I said. "And besides, nothing will be ruined. We can just take a picture of our gillyweed and then one of the lake. Even if we did find a charm to protect my camera, I wouldn't want to risk it. Uncle George gave it to me and I don't think he would be too happy if I broke it doing something like this."

"Yeah, maybe you're right," Finn said with a sigh.

"Now that we got that out of the way," Matt said with a laugh, leaning against the back of the couch and crossing his arms.

The common room was nearly empty and the few people who lingered in the corner of the room doing last minute studying were paying no attention to our conversation. Even still, I felt the need to lower my voice to a whisper.

"Are you sure we're ready to do this?"

Finn rolled his eyes impatiently. "Of course, Lissie," he said. "We have the gillyweed and that's really all we need."

"Should we have some sort of signals?" I asked. "You know, in case we need to communicate?"

"Easy," James spoke up. He pointed his finger in an upward direction. "We do this if we're going to swim back to the surface."

"That's it?" I asked.

"What more do we need?" he shrugged. "We'll be fine. Sometimes I think you worry too much, Liss."

"Sometimes I think _you_ don't worry_ enough_." I answered.

James smiled and shrugged. "Maybe."

"So, tomorrow then?" Shannon asked, taking a breath. "Meet here at eight?"

"Eight o'clock," I said, nodding. "Now I'm going to bed before I can change my mind about this." With that I marched off towards the stairs.

I wasn't going to say that going into the lake didn't scare me because it did. I knew it scared the others, too, but the only one who would actually admit it was Shannon. The boys liked to act brave. Of course, they really were brave, but that didn't mean they never got scared. All I knew was that I wanted the lake thing over with, but at the same time I knew that once I did it, it would feel nice. We would have done something that not many people got to do. It was risky, but at the same time, so exciting.

* * *

><p>"Okay, everyone put your hands in." James stuck his hand, palm up, out in front of him. The gillyweed was balanced right in the middle of his hand.<p>

The rest of us followed his lead. I held up my camera in my other hand and snapped the picture before darting over to the rock where we had stashed blankets and coats. I hid the camera under a blanket for safekeeping before joining the others. I had already taken a picture of the lake earlier in the day when the light was better. "Okay, ready," I said, shivering slightly, half due to nerves and half due to the chilly air.

"On the count of three," Finn said, raising the gillyweed towards his mouth slightly.

"One," I whispered.

"Two," Shannon continued.

"Three," James said.

We tipped the gillyweed into our mouths and started chewing as we began wading into the lake.

"This is horrible," I managed to gasp out. Uncle Harry had mentioned how unpleasant the gilllyweed had been at first, but I didn't know it would have been this bad. It tasted disgusting and slimy and I started feeling like I couldn't breathe. So, I did the only logical thing. I slid under the dark, cold water.

Instantly, it felt better. It was incredibly odd, not having to hold my breath underwater. At first, I kept forgetting and trying to hold my breath, but then I felt dizzy so I started breathing again. Glancing to my right, I saw my brothers, Shannon and Matt staring at their hands and feet that were now webbed. Mine were as well. I hadn't even noticed until now.

James started waving his hands to get our attention. When we all looked up at him, he motioned for us to follow him. I rolled my eyes at Shannon and she rolled her eyes back. We were both thinking the same thing. Why did James get to be in charge?

It didn't really matter though. I didn't mind. Being underwater was cool and everything, but it was still really cold and really dark and there was nothing interesting down here so far.

We swam for about thirty minutes and came across nothing. Everything was pretty still and quiet. I was actually starting to get bored and I could tell my brothers were, too. We had all come down here expecting something exciting to happen. I don't know, maybe something like the Giant Squid instantly speeding towards us.

James turned around and mouthed that maybe we should head back up. I shrugged sadly. I felt bad that we hadn't seen anything, but I didn't really want to stay down here much longer. Finn held up five fingers and wiggled them and we all understood he wanted five more minutes.

I must have jinxed our luck or something by thinking those thoughts about not finding anything. James continued to swim forward and so did the others. I swam behind them, looking at the sandy bottom of the lake. I realized we were swimming close to some some plants, (probably a bad idea by the way because of the weird creatures that hid there). The others had already pretty much made it past the plants so I tried to swim faster to catch up to them, but it wasn't fast enough. I was all of a sudden swarmed by grindylows. We had all left our wands out on the rock with the coats and blankets. Another bad idea. I had nothing to defend myself with.

I kicked my legs frantically, and for a while, it did nothing. The grindylows only latched on tighter. Their sharp fingers were scratching at my skin and their ugly mouths were sneering at me.

I leaned down and tried to pull one off my leg, but it only attached to my arm and crawled up to my shoulder. I felt like there were too many of them attacking me at once. If the gillyweed hadn't made me able to breathe underwater, I would have been suffocating. I shook my head frantically, trying to get rid of the grindylows, but nothing worked. I wondered how the others were doing. I couldn't even see them and that scared me. Had they been attacked, too? Had they even noticed I was being attacked?

Continuing to shake my head, I tried to see over the plants and the grindylows to locate the others. I still couldn't see anything. I kicked my legs harder and continued to thrash around. I would do whatever it took to get these things off of my limbs and then I could find my brothers and cousins. I could make sure they were alright.

The panic must have made me unable to think clearly, because I didn't think of what else was under the water besides the plants and dangerous creatures: rocks. And thrashing around wildly in an area where there are rocks is never a good idea. It's common sense, really. In all my thrashing, I wasn't paying attention. Besides that, I couldn't see and the next thing I knew, my head was colliding with something hard and sharp. I saw my own blood drift in front of my eyes just before everything went black.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thanks for reading and please don't forget to review! I know I don't update this story often, but I love hearing what people think. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far! :D **


	20. Chapter 20

My head hurt like crazy. That's the first thing I realized once I woke up. I couldn't get the energy to open my eyes just yet, but I knew I was awake and my head was throbbing. What had happened? It took me a minute to remember, but when I did, it made me nervous right away.

What time was it? What had happened to the others? I knew I wasn't in the lake anymore because I was lying on something soft. If I was in the hospital wing, then there was a chance people knew what we had been doing and we were going to be in serious trouble. The only way to find out the answer to these questions, though, was to open my eyes. So, I forced my eyelids to open.

I was in the hospital wing. Great, that meant there was a good chance that Madame Pomfrey knew we had been in the lake and she couldn't keep something like that a secret from anyone. I had gotten hurt. I wondered if it was bad enough where they'd have to tell my parents. That would ruin everything.

As for what time it was, I guessed it was early morning from the light just beginning to stream through the windows.

"Hey! She's awake!" a voice to my right yelled, making me jump.

"Finn?" I asked, recognizing his voice. I turned my head towards the movement as Finn and Cameron both raced to my side.

"We thought you were a goner," Cameron said, kneeling down beside my bed, crossing his arms on the mattress and resting his chin on his arms.

"Come on, I couldn't have been hurt that bad," I said. "Right?"

Finn and Cameron looked at each other. "Well, you were unconscious for the whole thing. You didn't see what your head looked like," Finn said.

I reached up and touched my head. There was a bandage there and it hurt to touch it. I winced. "How bad was it?"

"Bad," Cameron said. "Well, Madam Pomfrey fixed it up like it was nothing, but it was bleeding terribly. The first thing Finn said when we got here was 'she's dying!'" Cameron laughed and gave Finn a small shove.

"I was panicking!" Finn defended himself. "You're my sister, Liss. At least I'm not a jerk, like Cameron, who wasn't worried at all."

"Of course I was worried!" Cameron said, "But I knew she would be okay."

"Is everyone else alright? What about you two?" I asked. "Where is everyone, anyway?"

"You know how Madame Pomfrey is. She kicked everyone out besides us because we're your brothers," Finn answered, shrugging.

"But everyone's okay? The grindylows didn't attack anyone else?"

"They tried to," Cameron said, "but only when we went back to get you. You were the only one swimming over the plants at the time, so they had all swarmed to you."

"Great," I muttered.

"It took all of us to bring you back to the surface," Finn explained. "Then we had to get our things and carry you back to the castle."

"It was so scary," Cameron said. "We really shouldn't have gone into the lake."

"No, I'm glad we did," I said with a shrug. "Although…are we in lots of trouble? I mean, you must have had to tell Madame Pomfrey everything to explain how I got hurt and why we were all soaking wet."

Finn and Cameron looked at each other and smirked. "Actually," Finn began.

"What?" I asked slowly.

"We told Madame Pomfrey that you were sleepwalking. We told her it was something that you occasionally did whenever you ate Chocolate Frogs before bed. We told her you went all the way into the lake and hurt yourself."

"Then we told her Shannon woke up and saw you leave the dorm so she woke the rest of us and we all followed you down to the lake to get you out."

"She believed it?" I asked, my eyes widening.

"Yeah," Finn shrugged. "We had to promise her we wouldn't allow you to eat Chocolate Frogs before bed anymore, but since that wasn't really true in the first place, we really didn't have to promise anything."

"Wow," I said with a laugh. "Is she going to tell Mum and Dad?"

"No," Cameron shrugged. "I guess it wasn't that serious. She cleaned up the cut and said you would wake up soon. I think she's planning on releasing you tomorrow. Well, today, actually, considering it's morning now." He looked at the rising sun streaming through the window.

"I thought we were going to be in so much trouble. I thought everything was going to be ruined," I said, laughing again.

"No way," Finn said. "Did you forget who you have for brothers?"

"I should have known you'd think of something," I answered.

"Of course we would." Finn rolled his eyes at me. "Just do us a favor and make sure we don't have to bail you out of trouble again."

"Bail _me _out?" I asked, wide eyed. "You saved your own skins just as much as you saved mine."

"True, very true," Finn laughed. "But we also saved your life in addition to getting us all out of trouble, so…" he trailed off and shrugged.

"Fine, I'm eternally grateful," I answered, rolling my eyes.

"That's what we like to hear, Lissie," Finn answered with a smile. He patted my arm and he and Cameron stood up. "We're going to head back to the common room now. Shannon, Matt and James wanted to know as soon as you woke up. Plus, we wouldn't feel right leaving until you were awake."

"Maybe you do love me after all," I teased.

"Of course we do. You're our sister," Cameron said, for once not teasing back or acting disgusted about the subject.

"Yeah, we can't be the Weasley triplets without you," Finn added.

I smiled. "Thanks for saving me."

"Just don't make us have to do it again," Finn said, a smirk returning to his and Cameron's faces. "We have a quota on sentimental moments like this one, you know."

"Really," I answered, raising an eyebrow.

"Really," Finn answered. "You don't want us to use up that quota too quickly. Especially before we're older. I mean, look what happened to dad's Great Aunt Muriel. The stories he told us about her…well, she wasn't a pleasant lady."

"Are you saying she used up all of her sentimental moments?" I asked, giggling.

"We're not saying that," Cameron said. "We're heavily implying it."

I laughed again. "Anyway, next month we're going to visit Dumbledore's tomb right? That's what's next on the list? It shouldn't be too hard. We only need to get one of the boats they use for the first years to row over to that little island where the tomb is. It's not far. It'll be easy."

"Wow, look at this. You're already planning next month's excursion while you're recovering from the last one," Cameron said with a laugh.

I smirked. "Of course I am. Do you know how lucky we are to have made it this far without getting caught? I say we push our luck even further."

Finn and Cameron grinned at me. "We like the way you think," they said together.

"I try," I said with a laugh.

"We'll see you later, then," Cameron said. "Whenever Madame Pomfrey decides to let you leave."

"You're not coming to visit me again?"

"Nope," Finn said, shrugging. "You're awake, you're alive, and you look healthy to me, despite that bandage on your head. And like we said earlier, we have a sentimental moment quota. Can't use that up. Just remember: _Muriel_."

"Of course," I groaned, rolling my eyes. "Well, fine, just leave me here." I crossed my arms across my chest, half feeling truly upset that I was stuck in the hospital wing. Hopefully Madame Pomfrey wouldn't keep me for the rest of the day. That would just be entirely too boring.

"Shannon will probably come to visit," Finn said as he and Cameron retreated towards the doorway.

"Wait," I said, my eyes widening. I had just thought of something. "You haven't told Aerilyn, have you?"

"Of course not," Cameron said, widening his eyes as well. "She'd freak out and want to tell mum and dad right away."

"She's not to know I'm here," I said sternly. "We can't have her blowing our cover."

"Not after Cam and I went through all that work to come up with that sleepwalking story," Finn said. "Don't worry, Aerilyn won't know. If she asks, Cam and I will come up with something."

"Well, I know how good you are at that," I said with a smile.

Finn and Cameron grinned before waving and disappearing from the room, leaving me alone.


	21. Chapter 21

"You're sure you're okay with going this close to the lake again, Lissie?" James teased as we stood at the edge of the water.

"Shut up, I'll be fine. I'm not a baby," I retaliated, rolling my eyes. I shifted from one foot to the other impatiently. Matt, Shannon, Finn and Cameron had volunteered to go find a few boats for us to use to get to Dumbledore's tomb, leaving me alone with James.

"Hey, you know I'm just teasing, don't you?"

I nodded. "Luckily for you."

"I hope one of them remembers to get some oars for the boats," James said.

"Why?"

"The boats are only enchanted to move on their own from the school to the train station. Without oars, we can't really get anywhere unless we want to go to the train station where they pick up the first years."

"Good point," I said. "I'm sure they'll remember. If they don't, one of them will have to go back."

"Which will only waste time," James said with an impatient sigh.

"Do you always have to take charge of everything?" I teased, smirking at him.

"Yes," he answered in a bossy tone.

I laughed and glanced in the direction the others would be coming from for what seemed like the thousandth time. "I'm sure they'll remember the oars," I said again, "because without them, they won't be able to bring the boats to us, will they?"

"That's true," James said. "I didn't think of that."

"You thought they would drag them over the grass?" I asked with a giggle.

James shrugged. "That would have worked just as well," he said, trying hard to defend himself.

"I'm sure it would have," I said, trying to stifle my laughter.

"Look, they're coming," James said excitedly, pointing over my shoulder. I whirled around and sure enough, Shannon, Matt, and my brothers were slowly paddling three boats towards us. Shannon and Finn were in one, leaving Matt and Cameron to paddle two boats on their own.

"You know," Cameron panted when they finally reached us. "It's hard work paddling a boat on your own."

"Stop complaining," Matt laughed from behind him as he steered his boat closer to the shore.

"We gladly would have helped, but you insisted someone stay here," I said.

"As lookouts," Finn said, shaking out his arms.

"Sore already?" I teased.

"Nah," he said quickly.

"At least they remembered the oars," I said, looking at James over my shoulder.

"What do you think we are, stupid?" Cameron asked, looking insulted.

"Anyway, can you two just get into a boat?" Matt asked. "I'm not looking to get caught before we can even start."

James and I nodded. I climbed in Cameron's boat while James joined Matt.

"Here," Cameron said, handing me a few oars. "You're going to help paddle."

"Aye, aye, captain," I joked as Matt snorted with laughter from behind us.

It took us a little over half an hour to paddle our boats to the island that Dumbledore was buried on. The large white tomb sat right in the middle, surrounded by a thin layer of trees. The six of us climbed out of the boats and pulled them up slightly onto the shore so that they wouldn't drift away. After that, we just stood there, staring at the piece of white marble that was just a few yards away.

"So, what are we all waiting for?" James asked, but I could tell he was just as hesitant to move as the rest of us.

"If we don't move, it'll have been a waste to come here," I reasoned, but I didn't move. No one else did either.

"It's eerie," Shannon whispered.

"It shouldn't be," Finny shrugged, but he was chewing on the corner of his bottom lip, something he did when he was either thinking extremely hard or feeling nervous about something. "We didn't even know Dumbledore. He's basically a stranger to us."

"Yes, but at the same time, not really," I said. "I felt like I knew him because of all of the stories."

"You know," Shannon said, "why didn't we just sneak into the headmaster's office? We could've just talked to Dumbledore's portrait there and have been done with it."

"That's too easy," James said.

"Not necessarily," Shannon argued. "It's the headmaster's office. It's probably easier to get caught there than here."

"Yeah, but there's no fun in it," Cameron added.

"We're here now, so let's just get on with it," Matt said with a nod of his head. "Lissie, take the picture."

I slowly looked down at the camera hanging around my neck. "I don't feel right doing that," I said quietly. "Now that I'm here, it just feels…wrong."

"Lissie," Finn said firmly, "we did not come all the way out here to have you back out of taking a picture."

"Yeah, what about my sore arms?" Cameron asked, sticking his arms out in front of him.

"This isn't a tourist site," I said, raising my voice slightly. "One of the best headmasters Hogwarts has ever had is buried here. Any burial site isn't right to ogle at and take pictures of."

"Then why did you come? Why did we _all_ come?" Finn argued, throwing out his arms and looking around. "Why didn't you stop us when we came up with the idea or at any point up until now? Why didn't we just sneak into the headmaster's office like Shannon suggested?"

"I don't know, but it's not my fault. It's different talking about it and then actually coming here," I said.

"Just give me the camera," Finn said, exasperatedly, holding his hand out.

"No, it's mine."

"I know that, but you're being incredibly unhelpful right now, so just hand it over, I'll take the picture and we can leave."

"No," I insisted.

"Lissie, just give it to him so he'll be quiet and we can get out of here," Matt said, rolling his eyes.

I hesitated, but apparently, Finn got too impatient. He reached out and grabbed the camera. I pulled back and the strap broke. The camera sailed over Finn's head and out of his grip. He hadn't expected it to snap, apparently. Neither had I, for that matter. I watched with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open as my camera careened towards the water surrounding the island. It was almost like everything was moving in slow motion, my brain included. I couldn't think properly and I couldn't make myself do anything to stop my camera from hitting the water.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Shannon finally screamed, aiming her wand at my camera. It stopped an inch above the water.

"Oh thank goodness," I sighed as Shannon waved her wand and moved my camera towards me. I sat down on the grass and flopped onto my back. Shannon dropped the camera onto my stomach. "You don't know how much I love you right now," I told my cousin, hugging the camera to my chest. The strap had hit the water and it was drenched, the cold water soaking through my shirt, but I didn't care.

"That thing means a lot to you," Shannon shrugged. "Besides, I'm sure none of us want to lose all the pictures we took."

"They're developed already," Finn said. I glared at him and he blushed, digging his toe into the ground and his hands into his pockets. "I'm sorry, Lissie. I didn't know the strap would break. I got a little impatient."

"Thankfully Shannon saved you from paying for a new camera," I sniffed, standing up. Finn blushed even more and looked up at me through his long eyelashes.

"Sorry?" he said again, looking hopeful for my forgiveness.

I sighed. "I'll forgive you." With that, I took a deep breath and turned towards Dumbledore's tomb. "I just hope Dumbledore can forgive us for taking pictures of him."

"We can't actually _see_ him," Cameron said, raising an eyebrow.

"I know that, but still…" I shrugged and quickly snapped the picture.

"Should you have gotten closer?" James asked. "I think there were a few trees in the way."

I shot him a look, but nevertheless darted forward and took another picture before darting back.

"Scared?" Finn teased.

"Do _you _want to get any closer?" I huffed.

"Not particularly," Finn replied, his smirk faltering.

"Okay, then let's go," I answered, marching towards the boats. The others climbed in and I quickly repaired my camera strap before hanging it around my neck. The entire time I helped Cameron paddle, I kept looking down to make sure my camera was still there. I was not about to lose that thing again.

* * *

><p>During the first week and a half of April, it rained nearly every day.<p>

"If this keeps up," Finn announced, "it's going to be a real pain going into the Forbidden Forest."

"When do we plan on doing that, anyway?" I asked, shuffling the Exploding Snap cards I was holding. "Want to play another game?"

Finn resumed his seat across from me. "Sure."

"Cameron?" I asked.

"You know I'm in," he answered.

"So when are we going into the Forest?" I asked.

"When it's not raining, that's for sure," Finn muttered.

"Well, of courses that would be preferable," I snorted, "but it's not the end of the world if it's raining. We're washable and waterproof. Besides, the trees are pretty dense in the forest. They'll protect us from too much rain."

"Yeah, but how deep are we going?" Cameron asked. "I'm not about to get lost in there."

"Given our luck, we will," I sighed.

"Don't say that," Finn groaned.

Just then, the portrait hole opened and James came in, soaking wet and carrying his broom.

"Where were you?" Finn asked.

"Practicing," James answered, holding up his broom. "Can I play?" he asked, noticing our game of Exploding Snap.

"Sure, we were just starting a new game, I said, dealing him some cards. I glanced up. "Shouldn't you go change and get dried off first, though?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," James muttered. "I'll be back in a flash."

True to his word, he returned a few minutes later. "We were talking about when the best time to go into the forest would be," I informed him after a few moments of silence as we concentrated on the game.

James shrugged. "Whenever."

"It's been raining for the past week and a half," I pointed out.

"Clearly James doesn't care about that. He was just out there practicing Quidditch moves in the pouring rain."

"You better hope you don't get sick," I warned.

"I won't get sick," James scoffed. "And anyway, even if I start to feel sick, Madam Pomfrey can give me one of those Pepper Potions and I'll feel fine in no time."

"If you say so," I shrugged.

"Yeah, I do say so," James retaliated, chewing on a quill that had been lying on the table.

"Hey, that's my quill," Cameron said.

"So?" James asked with a laugh.

"You're _chewing_ on it."

James tossed the quill back at Cameron before sitting back in his seat, studying his cards. "So, when _are_ we going to go?"

"Whenever, right?" I asked, glancing over at him.

"Are you mocking me?"

"Of course I am," I teased. I then burst into laughter as the cards James was holding exploded in his face. He leaned back to avoid the explosion, glaring at me.

"You have to admit it was funny, James, come on," Cameron said as he and Finn joined in on the laughter.

"Yeah," Finn said, "you always laugh at us when our cards explode."

"Fine," James admitted, cracking a smile. "Maybe it was just a tiny bit funny."

I sank back into my chair and watched a group of fifth years playing darts over in the corner. Suddenly, I sat up straight. "Hey, I think I have an idea on how to pick a date to go into the forest."

"How?" James, Finn and Cameron asked together.

I pointed to the fifth years playing darts. "That's how."

"I still don't get it," James said slowly.

"Neither do we," Finn and Cameron added.

"And you're her brothers," James said. "Aren't you two supposed to understand her?"

"No, we never understand her," Finn teased with a snort of laughter. I leaned over and shoved him.

"Liar," I muttered.

"Okay, so what if I am?" he laughed, holding up his hands.

"Anyway," I continued, "why don't we just throw a dart at that calendar hanging on the wall? It'll land on a date and that's the day we'll go out into the forest."

"Lissie, that's brilliant," James said, his mouth dropping open.

"Wow, Lissie came up with a good idea," Cameron teased.

"Wow, Cameron's funny," I said sarcastically, aiming a kick at his shin that he dodged. "Since you were so rude to me just now, I think I'll have to do the honors of throwing the dart."

"I wasn't mean to you!" James said sweetly.

"Neither was I," Finn added.

"You were earlier," I told Finn. "You know, saying how you _never_ understand me." I stuck out my tongue. "James, if you want to throw the dart, you can."

"No, you can do it. It was your idea after all."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm positive. I'll throw it next month. If we use this method again, that is."

I smiled and headed for the group of kids playing darts. "Excuse me," I said.

One of the taller boys glanced at me. I recognized him as Adam, the boy Victoire had dated last year, before she started dating Teddy Lupin. "What's up, kiddo?" he asked.

"I just need to borrow one dart," I told him. "Just for a second."

"Why? We're in the middle of a game. You can't really join now."

"I don't want to actually _play_," I answered. "I just need it to make a decision."

Adam finally shrugged. "Fine," he said, handing me one of the darts he had in his hand. "You any good?" he added.

I shrugged as I walked over to the calendar a few feet away. "Wouldn't know. I've never really thrown a dart before."

"Well let's see what you've got, then," Adam said, watching me. I could tell his friends were watching me now as well."

"No pressure, Lissie," Finn called from across the room. "It's not like anyone's watching."

"Like I care about people watching me," I snorted, rolling my eyes before narrowing them as I focused on the calendar. I drew my arm back and then flung it forward, releasing the dart. It hit the calendar right in the middle: on the Wednesday of next week. I could hear Finn, James and Cameron cheering.

"Impressive," Adam said, clapping a few times. "Want to try on the actual board?"

I considered it, but then shook my head. "Maybe another time," I said with a smile.

"I'll have to take you up on that," Adam said.

"Sure," I answered quickly before hurrying away.

"Someone likes you," James snorted.

"No," I insisted. "He was just being friendly and plus that's just way too weird. He dated _Victoire_. Our cousin."

"Yeah, the same cousin who's dating Teddy, who's practically family," James said. "I'd say Adam's fair game if you want him."

"Just shut up," I advised him.

James saluted me and I rolled my eyes. "So next Wednesday it is?"

"Next Wednesday it is."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thanks for reading and don't forget to review! And thanks so much for all the reviews so far! I do read all of them and I love hearing what people think so keep it up! :)**


	22. Chapter 22

_"Luck is believing you're lucky." _**-Tennessee Williams**

* * *

><p>"What was that?" Cameron froze in his tracks and looked around, shining his lit wand in a circle.<p>

"What was what?" James asked impatiently.

"That sound," Cameron whispered.

"That was the sound of me stepping on a twig," I sighed. "Honestly, Cam, we've taken two steps into the forest and you're already scared."

"I'm not _scared_," he said. "I'm simply cautious."

"Mm," I agreed, stifling a laugh.

"You were scared," Finn teased.

"Okay, maybe, but not for me. I was looking out for you guys. We can't have Lissie getting hurt again."

"I'm about to hurt _you_, that's for sure," I muttered, pushing past him and taking the lead, holding my lit wand out in front of me.

"So, let's review for exams," James said and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice. "Let's go over what kind of creatures live in the forest."

"Let's see…" I began, tapping my chin in thought. "Unicorns, thestrals…"

"I meant _terrifying_ ones," James said.

"Werewolves, spiders, _you_…." I shrugged.

"And you," James countered. I turned and tried to lightly punch his arm, but he caught my wrist. "Nice try, but not good enough."

"Okay, I definitely heard a sound this time," Cameron said suddenly.

"Maybe it's a unicorn," James said, mock excited.

"I'd love to see a unicorn," Shannon sighed.

"I'm surprised you don't want to see a unicorn, James," I said, "considering your dad saw Moldy Voldy drinking one's blood."

James didn't say anything right away. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"You _want_ to run into something dangerous?" I asked.

"No, not exactly," James said, "but I want something good to happen."

No sooner had the words left his mouth then there was the sound loud sound of something stampeding across the ground. I swore I could almost feel the ground shaking.

"Okay, that's definitely not Lissie this time," Cameron said.

"Really? I thought it was," James said.

"If I wasn't so terrified, I would push you right now," I said, looking around.

"Centaurs!" Matt suddenly yelled, pointing somewhere to our left. Sure enough, a group of centaurs were galloping right towards us. They were moving so fast that I felt frozen in one spot. I was so sure that they were going to trample me or shoot an arrow at me.

"Lissie, move!" Finn yelled, pulling me out of the direct path of the centaurs.

The centaurs slowed to a stop and surrounded us, looking all of us up and down.

"What do we have here?" one of them asked.

"They're just children," another one said dismissively. "We never harm children, you know."

"Of course I know that," the first one said. "I am just curious as to why six young Hogwarts students are wandering around the forest at night. Surely they are not in a detention. If they were, Hagrid would be around."

"We came on our own. We're just going around to some of the places our parents went while they were at Hogwarts," James explained. "We don't mean any harm, so if you'll just let us go on our way-,"

"You mean to say that all six of you came in here willingly? Do you know what kind of creatures live in this forest?"

"Yeah, we were just discussing it, actually," Finn said. I elbowed him and he elbowed me back, rolling his eyes.

"I would advise you all to be careful. The forest is typically not a safe place for children like yourselves unless Hagrid is with you. Hagrid is well known among the creatures of the forest."

"Yeah, we figured," James said, "but we didn't want him to say no if we asked him to bring us. Our parents aren't supposed to find out what we're doing."

"Come on, let's get out of here. They're a waste of time," one of the other centaurs said, sounding impatient.

"Fine, let's go." The centaurs headed off again, some of them sending one last curious look over their shoulders at us.

"Okay, let's keep going," I said calmly, marching forward.

"Glad we got out of that alive," Shannon said with a sigh.

"Oh, come on, they're not that scary," Matt said. "Didn't you hear them? They don't harm children."

"Well then thank goodness for that," Shannon sniffed.

James let out a laugh and caught up to me. "Scared?" he asked.

"No," I answered quickly, shaking my head. "Are you?"

"Not at all," he answered, smirking.

"Well that's good," I answered calmly.

James looked at me and then turned around to face everyone else, walking backwards so that he could keep up with me. "So how about we go off the path?"

"James, we can't," Shannon said. "We wouldn't be able to find our way back."

"We could," James argued, "because I have a great sense of direction."

I snorted. "That's wonderful, but we're staying on the path. We're not going to run into trouble today."

"Who said anything about trouble?" James asked with a shrug.

"You did when you suggested we go off the path. We're bound to get lost and if we do, we have no way of contacting anyone to get us out. Not that we can do that anyway because this is all supposed to be a big secret," I said.

"Come on," James snorted. "My dad came in here loads of times and made it out alive."

"Yeah, because he was with Hagrid," I argued back.

"Not when he went to see Aragog," James answered. "That time he was rescued by a flying car."

I snorted. "That's not going to happen to us."

"How do you know?"

"That car is old. Very old. It was beaten up by the Whomping Willow and it's been staying in the forest for years. I doubt it works after all this time."

"It's a magic, flying, _enchanted_ car," James said. "Of course it still works. Now come on, let's go." With that, he disappeared into the trees.

With an exasperated look over my shoulder at the others, I started to follow my cousin. "James," I said sternly, pushing tree branches out of my way, "even if this car is still working, how can you be so sure that it'll come if we need it?"

"I'm not so sure, but I'm winging it,"

"I do love to wing it," Finn chimed in from behind me.

"In some cases, yes, fine, I'm all for winging it, but in this case, no. I don't particularly want to end up dead or in the hospital wing again."

"Or worse, expelled," Shannon said with a smile.

It actually made me grin. Uncle Ron was always teasing Aunt Hermione about that one moment in their first year, and it had become a running joke between us kids as well.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a rustling and scuttling sound.

"Oh, no, what now?" Shannon asked exasperatedly. "Is it more centaurs?"

"No, centaurs don't make that noise when they walk," Matt said confidently.

"Well, then what is it?" Shannon asked.

"The wind," James said with a shrug.

"Don't act like you aren't worried," I teased.

"I'm not worried," James said with a laugh. "The noise was most likely the wind. There's nothing to worry about."

"There's a lot to worry about in the Forbidden Forest," I told him seriously. "And it wasn't the wind because the trees weren't moving."

"Yes, they were," James said, but he didn't sound as sure this time.

"I don't know what trees you were looking at, but I didn't see a single one move."

"Lissie," Shannon whispered, tugging on my sleeve.

"What?" I asked, turning around.

"Spiders," she hissed, pointing behind me.

I turned and my mouth fell open as I saw that she was right. There were multiple spiders scurrying towards us and not little spiders either. A lot of them were almost as big as me.

"Uh-oh," James whispered.

"You better run," I warned him, "because if I don't get you first, those spiders definitely will."

That was all I needed to say to get James and everyone else running. The spiders started to chase us and I had had no idea until then just how fast spiders could move. Maybe it was just because these spiders were huge. I didn't know and I didn't care. I just wanted to get away.

"Does anyone have any idea where we're going?" Finn asked.

"We're heading back towards the castle," James panted.

"How do you know? You don't because we went off the path, thanks to you. We have no idea what direction we're going in and it's entirely your fault!"

"You followed me," James argued. "You agreed to this."

"Oh sure, blame it on me," I said.

"Just keep running," Shannon said.

"We could be going deeper into the forest, though, for all we know," I said.

"Yeah, but if we stop, we're going to be eaten by spiders," Finn answered.

"I think they're gaining on us." Cameron glanced over his shoulder nervously.

I did the same and nervously bit my lip. It looked like there were a lot more spiders than I remembered seeing originally. "And I think they called for backup," I muttered under my breath.

"What was that spell my dad said he used when the spiders were chasing him and Uncle Ron?" James asked. "Lissie? Do you know?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"You have the best memory!"

"I can't remember anything right now!"

"You have to, Lissie. Think!"

So that's what I did. I tried to clear my head and think about what I had heard about my uncles fighting off the spiders. Suddenly, I remembered and aimed my wand over my shoulder. "Arania Exumai!" I heard a squeaking sound as my spell hit at least one of the spiders.

Following my lead, my cousins began shooting the spell behind us as well, but I didn't know how well it was going to work. There may have been too many spiders.

"I don't think we can keep this up much longer," Finn said, voicing my thoughts. "There's just too many of them and only six of us."

"Yeah, but we have wands and this spell seems to be working," James argued.

"But James, there's way too many spiders," Shannon said. "It's like more keep coming as fast as we can get rid of them."

"So what do you suggest we do?" James asked, panting even more than he had been earlier. We were all getting tired of running.

"I have no idea," Shannon said breathlessly.

Just when I thought that there was no way out of this one, we got lucky. Honestly, we had gotten lucky a lot lately. I almost didn't understand _how _we were getting so lucky, but we were. There was a loud noise before a bright light shone from up ahead of us, growing bigger and bigger as it came closer.

"This is a joke, isn't it?" Cameron asked, realizing what was going on at the same time I did.

"It has to be," I said, shaking my head.

"Is that—is that the _car_?" James asked. He let out a disbelieving laugh. "I was only joking when I said it earlier. I didn't think it would actually come. I didn't even know if it was still working."

"Well, it _is_ enchanted," I said, shrugging. The six of us skidded to a stop as the car stopped in front of us. It had definitely seen better days and it didn't move very fast, but it was going to have to be fast enough. We clambered inside and rolled down the windows. The car started to move as we continued to shoot spells back at the spiders, who were still chasing us.

"See?" Shannon commented, as the car turned around and went in the opposite direction from the one we had been running in. "We _were _going the wrong way after all, James."

James shrugged. "Oops."

"Are these spiders going to chase us all the way out of the forest?" I asked.

"I don't know, but you should get a picture," Cameron said.

Sighing, I managed to take a picture with one hand and shoot a spell with the other. I was a little surprised to see that the jet of light made it into the picture. "Cool," I muttered, tucking my camera back inside the car.

Finally, the trees began to thin and the number of spiders behind us seemed to diminish a little. I think they were the most comfortable deep in the forest. The car reached the very edge of the trees and skidded to a stop. We barely had time to take a breath before we were ejected roughly from our seats. I landed on my back with a thump, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of me. Ignoring it, I managed to sit up and snap a quick picture of the car before it disappeared back into the woods.

"Well that went well," Finn said, wincing and rubbing his shoulder as he sat up.

"We keep getting so lucky." I shook my head. "I can't even believe it."

"Neither can I, but I'll take it," Finn shrugged. "It's better than dying or even getting caught and having mum and dad find out before they're supposed to."

"I suppose," I sighed, standing up. "Come on, let's get back to the castle before those spiders decide to venture out of the forest."

"We should have taken one back as a souvenir," James said.

I snorted. "As long as you would have kept it in your bed."

"No, I was thinking your bed," James said.

"Shut it," I muttered, pushing him.

He rolled his eyes before grinning. "So, how many more days until the next adventure?"

"James," the rest of us groaned loudly.

James just laughed and darted inside.


	23. Chapter 23

"It's our last one," I said, almost sadly. "The last time we'll ever have to do this."

"Sad?" Finn asked with a smirk.

"A little bit, yeah," I answered, trailing my fingers along the stone wall of the hallway outside the common room. We were headed for the secret passageway that led to the hidden tower my dad had found while he was at school. Exams had finished earlier that day and the morning after tomorrow, we'd be headed home.

"I'm still pretty angry that you didn't invite the rest of us to join you on most of these adventures," Aerilyn said, glancing at Albus, Raina and Rose.

"We invited you on this one," I shrugged.

"Yeah, probably because it's the last one and because it's 'safe'." She made quote marks in the air and wrinkled her nose.

"Pretty much," Finn said.

"Do you think Mum and Dad will be angry when we show them the book we made?" Aerilyn asked.

I shrugged again. "Maybe at first, but there's nothing they can do about it now. We already did everything."

"What about your parents?" Aerilyn asked, looking at our cousins.

"My mother's hair might light on fire," Rose said, "but then again, maybe not since I actually didn't participate in all of the adventures."

"You participated in some," James said, "and there are pictures to prove it."

"Do you want us to burn them, Rose?" Finn asked, rolling his eyes.

"No," she replied.

"Good, because it's not happening."

"I don't want you to burn them because I'm not that scared of my mother being angry. I don't really care if she's angry. Well, I do, but I'll get over it."

"Really?" I asked.

Rose nodded. "I mean, the stuff I got to do was a lot of fun, believe it or not. It wasn't so bad breaking the rules."

"Wait a moment," James said, sticking his finger in his ear and wiggling it around. "Say that again. There may have been something in my ear."

"You heard me," Rose said, half smiling and rolling her eyes.

"She's going to say we're a bad influence on you," Cameron warned her.

"But you are a bad influence on me," Rose answered, wrinkling her nose at him. "I just don't really care all that much."

"Good, good," James said in an eerie voice. "That means it's working."

"What's working?"

"Our plan to make you as evil as the rest of us."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Well, that's great. Do you want an award or something?"

"Yeah, actually I do," James answered.

I rolled my eyes. "I think this is it," I said, stopping and running my hand along the wall. "Now we just have to find the spot that opens the wall."

"Everyone pick a spot of the wall," James ordered.

We stood in a line along the wall and began pressing random stones to see which one was the switch. This was one thing our parents hadn't specified when they told us stories.

"Got it!" Aerilyn said joyfully a few minutes later, pressing her palm onto a spot in the cool stone. A stretch of wall swung back slightly, revealing a dim passageway.

"Let's go," I said, smiling and leading the way into the tunnel.

"Does anyone remember how long this passageway is?" Finn whined a few minutes later.

"No, and why does it matter?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's part of the adventure," Aerilyn added.

"Is it not exciting enough for you?" Shannon teased.

"No, it's not that. It's just that I'm sick of walking."

"We haven't been walking all that long," I reminded him. "Grow up."

Even in the dark, I could tell Finn was rolling his eyes and resisting the urge to trip me.

When we finally reached the end of the passageway, I pushed on another wall, which opened to the tower.

"Oh, wow," Aerilyn breathed.

"This is really high," Albus pointed out.

"Well, yeah, it's a _tower_, Al," James snorted.

"I know, but we can see so much from up here. There's Hagrid's hut. It looks so small from up here."

"There's the lake. Lissie's favorite spot," Finn teased, nudging me.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure it'll be your favorite too once I push you in and feed you to the giant squid." I leaned my elbows on the stone railing and looked out at the view. The stars were just coming out. "I could stay up here forever."

"That's okay with us," Finn and Cameron said together, shrugging. I reached over and shoved them.

"I wouldn't like it if you stayed up here forever," Aerilyn said.

"You would miss me?" I asked, smiling.

She shrugged. "Yeah, but I really don't want to be stuck with these two for the rest of my life without another girl around." She jerked her head towards Finn and Cameron.

I laughed and pulled her into a hug. "I understand completely," I said as Finn and Cameron narrowed their eyes, insulted.

I took quite a few pictures on that tower. I took one of just the view and then I took pictures of my siblings and cousins standing by the railing.

"Are we done _now_?" Raina complained after what felt like the millionth picture.

I looked around. "Yeah," I decided, feeling I was satisfied with the time we had had up here.

"Good, because I can't wait to get off of this girly tower," Finn said, rushing for the door.

"It's _not _girly!" Shannan and I said together as we followed him back into the passageway.

"How is it girly?" Aerilyn asked.

"Boys don't like to look at stars and sunsets," Matt said. "Didn't we discuss this already?"

"Yeah, well, maybe girls don't like to look at stars and sunsets either," Rose sniffed.

We all looked at her.

"Okay, well maybe we do. Sometimes. But it's not specifically a _girl _thing. It's not like we obsess over it. I'm insulted, personally."

"Don't be," Finn said. "We weren't insulting you. We were just stating how we felt as boys. I wouldn't feel insulted if you said you didn't like boy things."

"You probably would be," Rose muttered.

I laughed and Finn shot me a look. "Thanks for sticking up for me," he teased. "Good to know you just like to laugh at me."

"Of course I like to laugh at you," I shrugged with a grin. Finn just rolled his eyes.

* * *

><p>The night before we were to leave Hogwarts, I sat in my dorm, holding the book we had made of our adventures. I had finished putting the pictures in that afternoon and then had hunted everyone down to get them to write something about the sunset tower.<p>

As I flipped through it now, I saw that all Finn had written was _GIRLY_ in all capital letters. I rolled my eyes. I'd have to remind myself to make a bet with him that in a few years, he'd be bringing his girlfriend up there just like dad had with mum. I could definitely rake in a few Galleons by doing that.

"It looks good," Shannon said from the doorway. I hadn't even known she was there.

"I think so, too," I said, setting it down on my bed. I paused. "Shan?"

"Yeah?" she responded, climbing into her bed.

"Do you think our parents will be very angry?" It was a concern we had all expressed since the beginning of the year, but now our parents were seeing the book tomorrow.

"I don't know," she answered. "We could always not show them the book."

"I suppose so, but I don't think we'd be able to get everyone to agree on that. I mean, we did all of it and I think all of us would get some kind of feeling of pride from showing our parents what we did. Obviously we wouldn't tell them about the really dangerous parts."

"Like the time you split your head open in the lake?" Shannon smirked.

"Yeah, like that," I said. "Aerilyn, Rose, Raina and Albus still don't know about that. And I didn't split my head _open_. I just severely cut it."

Shannon smirked and shrugged as if to say _same thing_. I smiled and snuggled under my covers. "Goodnight, Shan."

"Goodnight, Lissie."

Leaning over, I turned off the lamp and fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

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><p>The next morning, I woke up early. I was still feeling anxious about telling our parents what we had done over the course of the year and I had one other person in mind that could tell me if actually telling our parents was the right choice. I dressed, grabbed the book and made my way down to the greenhouses. I knew for a fact that Neville always went to the greenhouses early on the very last day of the school year.<p>

"Er, Professor?" I asked from the doorway.

He turned around and smiled when he saw me. "Lissie, you're up early. What are you doing down here?"

I looked down and dragged my toe along the floor. "I wanted to talk to you."

Sensing that something was on my mind, Neville put down his watering can, took off his gardening gloves, and sat down on one of the lower tables in the greenhouse. He patted the spot next to him and I sat down as well. "What's on your mind?" he asked.

"Remember that time I had detention with you this year?"

He nodded. "What about it?"

"Remember how you asked what we were up to and I didn't want to tell you?"

"Yes," Neville said slowly.

I pulled the book out of my bag and passed it to him. "This is what we were doing."

"Hogwarts, A History: Our Way?" Neville asked, looking up at me.

I nodded. "Yeah."

Neville opened to the first page and saw the list we had made of every adventure we had planned to go on. He saw the small list of things that we had planned to discover about Hogwarts and then he flipped through the rest of the book and looked through the pictures and handwritten descriptions and thoughts about each and every adventure. He stared at the Dumbledore's Army sign-up sheet for a very long time. Finally, he closed the book and just stared at it.

"We were going to show our parents when we got home," I said, "but now I'm thinking that they might be incredibly angry with us for doing all of these things since most of them were, well, dangerous. What do you think they'll do?"

Neville looked at me and didn't say anything. His expression was unreadable. "Are _you_ angry?" I asked, biting my lip.

Neville sighed. "No," he said, passing the book back to me. "I'm not _angry_, but I think a lot of what you did _was_ incredibly dangerous. You do realize that, don't you? You're lucky that none of you got hurt."

I figured it was best not to mention my head injury. "We do understand, but we wanted to do what our parents did. We were fascinated by all of it. I think we all kind of want to be like them. And like you."

"Me?"

"Yeah, you were close friends with them," I shrugged. "We know about you cutting off Nagini's head."

"You didn't go looking for any snakes to cut the heads off of, did you?" Neville asked.

"No," I laughed. "Although, that's a good idea."

Neville groaned. "Your parents will kill me if they think I put ideas into your heads."

I shook my head. "We're done with this project anyway. No more re-living past events."

"Personally," Neville said, "I'm kind of flattered that you look up to me and I'm sure your parents, aunts and uncles will somewhat feel the same way. Your Uncle Ron will be amazed by what you did, actually, but I'm not your dad and neither is your Uncle Ron."

"Right, I'm mostly worried about my parents."

"Your mother will be more upset than your father."

"I know," I nodded.

"I don't think they'll be too angry seeing as all of you are alive and unhurt, but they're probably going to be a little angry initially."

I nodded. "I figured. Aunt Hermione will be furious, don't you think?"

"Hard to say. She's surprised me quite a few times when it comes to rules." Neville shrugged.

I nodded.

"You know," Neville said, "you're all a lot braver than I was at your age. When I was thirteen, I got beaten up by my Care of Magical Creatures textbook.

"The Monster Book of Monsters?" I asked, giggling. "My mum told me about that book. She was afraid of it but dad thought it was a riot."

"I was afraid of it, too," Neville muttered. "Anyway, this book is actually really good. It's creative and clever. You don't have much on this list of things you discovered about Hogwarts, though." He flipped open to the page. "Two things."

"Yeah, we didn't have much time for that what with all of the other adventures and everything."

Neville leaned backwards slightly and reached behind me for a quill. Hopping off the table, he began to write, hiding the book from my view.

"What are you writing?" I asked curiously.

"You'll see in a moment," he chuckled, gently pushing me away as I tried to peer over his arm.

I anxiously stood next to him, tapping my foot impatiently. Finally, Neville closed the book and handed it back to me. At once, I opened it to see what he had written. He had added a number three and a number four to the list.

"_Number three_," I read, "_Professor Longbottom spends the last few months of school growing a big pot of daisies for Luna in the greenhouses. On the morning of the last day, he comes down to water them and prepare them for the journey home to Luna_…Really? That's what you do down here every year?"

Neville smiled and nodded. "Nobody knows. It's not exactly part of the curriculum to have daisies down here so I never wanted to tell any of the other staff members. I'm sure they wouldn't exactly mind, but still…" he shrugged.

"That's sweet," I said before looking down at the book again. "_Number four. Professor Longbottom also knows how the Dumbledore's Army sign-up sheet was able to make it into this book…_you do?" I looked up excitedly.

"Keep reading," he urged.

"_Umbridge did take the list, but while everyone thought she kept it or it was lost forever, Professor Longbottom snuck it out of her desk drawer the day he was in there before going to the battle at the Ministry of Magic in his fifth year. He kept it for a while, but eventually thought it would be best if he put it back in the room where it all began: the Room of Requirement._"

"There you have it," Neville said, leaning back on the table.

"We wondered how it ended up back in the room," I said excitedly.

"Well, now you know."

I grinned and took the quill from his hand, scribbling in a number five on the list.

"Professor Longbottom is the best professor Hogwarts has ever seen...are you sure that's a secret?" he teased, reading over my shoulder.

I giggled. "Well, it's what I think, and we can't have any other professors else finding out because they might be angry."

Neville grinned and ruffled my hair. "You should head back on up to the castle. You don't want to be late for breakfast or the train home. Then your parents would really be upset."

"True," I said, gathering up the book in my arms. "Thanks, Professor Longbottom."

"It's the end of the year," he grinned, "you can call me Neville now…until school starts again, of course."

I nodded and turned to leave. At the door, I paused and turned around. "I'll be seeing you over the summer?"

"Most likely. I'll stop by as much as I can."

"With Luna?" I asked eagerly.

Neville laughed. "Of course. She loves seeing you as much as you love seeing her."

I grinned and waved before leaving the greenhouse and making my way back up to my dorm, feeling much better than I had when I woke up.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave a review! There's probably only going to be one more chapter of this story. It's hard to believe it's almost over!**


	24. Chapter 24

_"You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you." _**-Meryl Streep**

* * *

><p>"There they are," I said, pointing towards my parents and all of my aunts and uncles, who were standing in one big group on the platform.<p>

"There they are," Finn repeated.

"They look happy to see us," Rose said as Aunt Hermione waved cheerily at her, looking eager to start asking all about Rose's first year at Hogwarts.

"Now they do," Cameron muttered.

"Relax," James said calmly. "They can't be too mad at us and even if they are it won't last long."

"Yeah, that's what you think," Rose sighed.

"Your mum might surprise you," I told her. "Maybe she won't be that mad. Maybe she'll be impressed."

"Doubt it."

"I think she might be," I said, shrugging. "At some point or another. Once her blood pressure comes down after she finds out what we were doing all year."

"Thanks for the moral support," Rose muttered.

"Anytime," I answered.

"Come on, let's go," Cameron said. "Or else they're going to be wondering what's up with us and why we're just standing here looking at them instead of going over to them."

"We were gone for nine and a half months. They can't expect us to miss them _that_ much," Finn said.

"Exactly," James agreed with a laugh.

We walked over to our parents and confusion and chaos broke out as everyone started hugging and talking at once.

"I swear you three have grown again," my mother mused, examining me and my brothers. "Fred, do they look taller to you?"

Dad shrugged and scratched his ear. "I don't know."

Mum sighed and shook her head. "Anyway, how was your year? Good? You did all your work? Behaved? Stayed out of trouble?"

Finn, Cameron and I looked at each other. "Attempted to," I answered.

"As long as you tried," dad said nonchalantly. I giggled as mum swatted him.

"Hey, Lissie, I hope you put that camera to good use," Uncle George said, gesturing to the camera around my neck as he and the rest of my aunts and uncles made their way over so that we could all head towards the exit. Victoire and the rest of our cousins had made their way over to us by then.

I stopped walking and everyone stopped to look at me. "I have," I said, looking up at them.

"Good, good," Uncle George said. "You'll have to show me all of the pictures you took."

I looked at my cousins. James nodded for me to keep talking, so I did. "Actually, I'd like to show you now while we're all together." I lowered my trunk to the ground and knelt down to open it.

"Honey, I don't think this is the best time," my mother said. "Can it wait until we get home? There are plenty of times when we'll all be together and you can show us then."

"No, I'd rather show you sooner than later. You see, we weren't sure how you'd react…"

"We? Who's we?" Aunt Ginny asked.

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Mum groaned.

I bit my lip. "I was nervous about telling you but I talked to Neville about it and he said you might be flattered…"

"You talked to _Neville_ about what we did?" Finn asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, he was pretty cool about it."

"I think we discovered the 'we'," Aunt Ginny muttered glancing between me and Finn.

"It was all of us," I said. "Well, me, Finn, Cameron, James, Matt and Shannon."

"And sometimes Aerilyn, Albus, Raina and I," Rose chimed in. I hadn't been planning on mentioning them right away, not wanting to get them in trouble, but apparently, Rose didn't care. I smiled at her and continued to talk.

"Well, it might be better if I just showed you what I'm talking about."

"Yes, I think it would be best," mum said, raising her eyebrows, "because I'm not following this."

I opened my trunk and pulled out the book before handing it to my mother. My dad peered over her shoulder while Uncle George looked over her other. The other adults crowded around to read as well and I held my breath.

As soon as my mother started reading the list of adventures on the first page, her head snapped up. "Do _not_ tell me you did all of these things and documented them in this book. Do _not_ tell me that."

"Okay, then I won't," I shrugged.

"Even though that _is_ what we did," Finn added.

Mum's eyes widened and her grip tightened on the book. She looked down at the list. "You mean to tell me that you went through that trapdoor? You went _into_ the Chamber of Secrets? You went in the lake? Have you all lost your minds?"

I could tell she was trying not to yell since we were in a public place and I bit my lip. "Yes, that's what we did, but-,"

"You were in on this, too, Rosie?" Aunt Hermione asked.

"Yes, you dragged _them_ into it?" My mother pointed at Rose and our other younger cousins. "Your little sister and cousins. They're eleven."

"That's how old you were when you went through the trapdoor," Aerilyn pointed out. "It wasn't that bad, Mum."

"Because you got lucky! You could have gotten hurt or killed! It was different before. You can't go doing these things for fun."

"It was my idea, Aunt Auden," James said. "It was originally going to be me, Shannon, Matt, Lissie, Finn and Cameron. I asked them to do it with me. We tried to stop the others from coming along-,"

"They did," Rose admitted, "but we _really_ wanted to go."

"This is why we caught you in the cave over the winter holidays, isn't it?" Aunt Ginny asked, looking at the list. "It was part of this…project."

I nodded. "Yes. We were as careful as we could be and we're all fine. We only did it because we wanted to do the things you did. We think all the things you did were _cool_ and fascinating."

My mother sighed, handed the book to dad and knelt down in front of me. "Lissie, that's very sweet, but you shouldn't have put yourself in danger. None of you should have. It's not worth it."

I nodded.

"And it's just that dad's famous. Everyone thinks he's cool," James added.

"You don't have to be famous to be cool," Uncle Harry said.

"Yeah, take me for example. I'm not famous," Uncle Ron said.

"I thought you were," I smirked. "The best game of chess Hogwarts has ever seen? Sound familiar?"

"Yeah, see? Even Uncle Ron's famous," James said.

"Harry's point was," Dad continued, "that we think you're pretty cool whether you go on adventures or not. These adventures did give you bonus points, though."

"Not helping, Fred!" Mum exclaimed as Dad laughed.

"Not all of the adventures were dangerous, by the way," I told them. "We went to the tower dad brought you to."

"You did?" Mum asked, her eyes softening.

I nodded. "We did."

"They did," Dad said, flipping through the book to the last page where the pictures from that adventure were. Mum stood up and went to look over his shoulder. Dad chuckled and pointed to the page. "Finn thinks it's girly."

"It is," Finn insisted. "It was just a tower where you can see a bunch of stars."

Mum let out a tiny laugh.

"Where else did they go?" Uncle Ron asked eagerly.

"Ron!" Aunt Hermione scolded.

"You can't pretend you're not at least a little bit curious, Hermione," Uncle Ron said.

"That's not the point! The point is that they went on all of these dangerous, crazy adventures! They could have died or-,"

"Or worse, been expelled?" Uncle Ron asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, expelled yes, but maybe that's not worse…"

"Finally got your priorities sorted out, have you?"

Aunt Hermione pursed her lips. "Shut it."

"Come on," Uncle Ron coaxed. "You know you're interested."

Aunt Hermione took a deep breath. "All right, maybe I am a little bit."

I grinned and turned to smile at my cousins and siblings, who smiled back. Rose looked downright relieved.

"We went to the Forbidden Forest, look," Finn said, reaching up and flipping the pages. He looked eager to show everyone the book now that he knew we weren't in big trouble.

"Those spiders are still there?" Uncle Ron groaned.

"The _car_ is still there!" Uncle Harry exclaimed pointing. "It rescued all of you?"

I nodded. "It still works, oddly enough."

"Dad must have done something to it," Uncle George laughed.

When they flipped to the Room of Requirement page, I saw my dad frown slightly. "You have the Dumbledore's Army sign-up sheet."

"I thought Umbridge had it," Uncle Harry said.

"We thought that, too," I said, standing up. "But…" I flipped back to the front of the book as my mother slid the sign-up sheet from the book and examined the names. I pointed at the list of things we figured out about Hogwarts. "The answer's in this list."

Everyone crowded in closer to read.

"The trolley witch's name is Maggie?" Aunt Ginny asked, raising her eyebrows.

"And I never knew the spell they used to send the food up to the great hall," Mum said, shaking her head in wonder.

"Neither did we," Dad said gesturing to himself and Uncle George. "We actually never even thought to ask."

"I'm surprised," Mum said.

"So are we," Dad and Uncle George said together.

"Oh, how sweet, Neville grows Luna a pot of daisies every year," Aunt Ginny said quietly as Mum and Aunt Hermione smiled softly.

"_Neville_ stole the list back?" Uncle Harry asked. He had apparently read number four on the list first.

"When Umbridge and the Inquisitorial Squad had us captive in her office," Uncle Ron said, nodding. "I didn't even know he did that."

"I'm not surprised," Uncle Harry shrugged. "He and Luna loved being in Dumbledore's Army. Sometimes I think it meant more to them than it did to us."

My dad slowly closed the book and smiled at my mother. "I don't know, Aud, I think this is pretty impressive."

"Are you all still angry?" Aerilyn asked.

Mum sighed. "I'm feeling more happy that you're safe than angry that you did it. Besides, your father's right. The book's pretty impressive."

"The photos are fantastic, Lissie," Uncle George said. "And you really did put the camera to good use. Even if it was dangerous." He added the last sentence quickly after Aunt Katie raised an eyebrow at him.

I smiled. "Thanks for giving it to me. I love it."

"Where are we going to keep this book?" Mum asked. "I mean, which one of our families should keep it?"

"Joint custody?" Dad suggested. "We could switch off."

"It might get lost that way," Aunt Hermione said.

"Oh, who's so keen on this book now?" Dad teased as Aunt Hermione blushed and crossed her arms.

"I'm just pointing it out," she sniffed, but she was hiding a smile.

"You and Fred should keep it, Auden," Aunt Ginny said. "They went to the tower and the tree house. Those places were special to you and Fred."

"But the other places-," Mum began.

"Aren't exactly places I'm fond of," Uncle Harry said, "except for maybe the Room of Requirement. Ginny's right. You two should keep it."

Dad smiled. "Thanks, Harry."

Uncle Harry smiled back. "Don't mention it, really."

Mum sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. "Come on, let's get you kids home. You'll probably want to sleep after all those adventures."

"No," Finn, Cameron and I snorted at once.

Mum closed her eyes and sighed as Dad laughed and one thing about my dad is that he had a really contagious laugh so within seconds, he had everyone else laughing as well. I felt immense relief. Neville had been right. It had all turned out okay and the good thing was that my siblings, cousins and I had seen what we had wanted to see and experienced what we wanted to experience. There wouldn't be a need to repeat history again. I believe twice was more than enough for everyone.

Later that night, as I was passing the living room to get to the kitchen for a glass of water, I saw my parents sitting on the couch. My dad's arm was around my mother's shoulders and they were looking at the book more closely. I stopped and peeked into the room.

"I miss that tree house," my mother whispered, trailing her hand over what I guessed was the tree house page.

"We can always go back," Dad said, "any time you want. Just say when and I'll take you."

"We can't just leave the kids…"

"We'll go when they're off to school again," Dad said, "or we'll get Neville and Luna to watch them. The kids love Neville and Luna. I think they think they're cooler adults than we are."

I smiled as mum giggled. "I would love to go back."

"Whenever you want," Dad reminded her.

I tiptoed away from the door and made my way to the kitchen. As I drank my water, I smiled. I was glad we had gone on the adventures. Maybe our parents were mad at first, but it turned out that the book brought back a ton of memories for them. It was then that I realized how important it was that Finn, Cameron, my cousins and I made our own Hogwarts memories so that we could share stories with our kids one day. I smirked as I imagined my future kids and their cousins trying to recreate my Hogwarts history. I don't think I would have minded all that much if they did. Just as long as they managed to come home in one piece. Like my mother, I don't approve of _too_ much recklessness after all, but naturally a little is always okay because, well, I am a Weasley after all.

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><p><strong><strong>AN: I actually managed to get this chapter finished a lot sooner than I have been lately, so I decided to upload it. It's going to be the last chapter**. It's really weird to be done with this story, the last one that has to do with Auden and Fred. I hope everyone else liked it too and thanks to everyone who reviewed and favorited!**


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